Inside India’s mines: How miners dug their own graves between 2013-2018

A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals. Thousands of miners die due to mining accidents each year.

Coal mining is considered much more hazardous than hard rock mining due to flat-lying rock strata, generally incompetent rock, the presence of methane gas, and coal dust.

In 2018, at least 15 miners were trapped inside the 370 feet flooded coal mine for 42 days now since December 13 at Ksan village in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills district, which has led to a multi-agency operation involving the Navy, the NDRF and leading firms in the country to join the efforts to rescue them in the longest such mission in the country.

Going by the official statistics, the trend of average fatality rate and the number of serious accidents seem to have been coming down over the years.