Navy vehicle sent to determine visibility gets stuck at bottom of Meghalaya mine

Shillong, Jan 8: An unmanned, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) of the Navy which was sent down the 370-feet-deep rat-hole coal mine in Meghalaya, where 15 miners are trapped since December 13, to determine visibility at the base of the shaft reportedly got stuck Monday, officials said.

The unmanned vehicle was put into service to determine the visibility deep down at the bottom of the mine shaft and in case if there was any sign of the trapped miners, a senior government official told PTI, requesting anonymity.

"The underwater remotely operated vehicle got stuck at the bottom of the 370-feet-mine where the depth of water is over 160 feet," the official told PTI.

How the machine got stuck is yet to be established, but rescue officials at the site suspect that the vehicle could have got itself entangled with some parts of the pump put in by Kirloskar Borthers Ltd which had fallen down.

Chief minister Conrad K Sangma, who was overseeing the entire operation, was also not alerted about the matter as it was "too sensitive", according to the official sources.

This information was also not disclosed by the operation spokesperson R Susngi in his routine update to the media in the evening.

Meanwhile, according to Susngi, Coal India Ltd pumps managed to pull out 2.25 lakh litres of water in two hours as the pump was operational only in the afternoon.

CIL pumps were installed in the abandoned mine nearby the main shaft while Odisha Fire Service pumps were installed along the way to take the water up to the river Lytein, he said.

The two pumps put in by OFS for 10 hours managed to pump out approximate 1.8 lakh litres of water from another abandoned mine shaft nearby, Susngi said.

Today was the 26th day of the Meghalaya mine disaster.

PTI