Meghalaya mine disaster: Navy, NDRF divers to go down to measure afresh water level
Shillong, Jan 2 : Navy and NDRF divers are preparing to enter a Meghalaya coal mine, where 15 miners are trapped, to gauge the water level, even as efforts are on Wednesday to instal high-powered submersible pumps to drain out water from interconnected shafts, officials said.
They divers will measure the water level again to take a call on resuming search and rescue operation for the trapped diggers, they said.
Operation spokesperson R Susngi told PTI that so far only one of the 10 pumps brought by a team from Odisha is in use in a nearby abandoned mine.
"We expect a high powered pump from Coal India be put to use later today. Till now, a lot of preparation is going on," Susngi said.
Divers from Navy and the NDRF will go inside the main shaft, where the disaster occurred on December 13, to measure afresh the water level to take a call on resuming search and rescue operation, Susngi said giving details of the operation on the 21st day of the disaster.
The exercise is to find out if the abandoned mine is connected with the 370-foot-deep mine in which the 15 miners were trapped, Susngi said.
Other five pumps with similar power and functions from Coal India Ltd are on the way by road from their various centres across the country.
On Tuesday, water level had gone down by six inches in a nearby shaft but when Navy and NDRF divers went inside the main shaft they found that it was not connected with the rat-hole mine and hence water level remained unchanged to conduct the search and rescue operation.
Till Tuesday only one pump was operational. After three hours pumping the water in the old shaft nearby, it was found that the water level in the nearby old shaft descended upto 6 inches, operation spokesperson R Susngi had said.
He said that the same pump will work for more number of hours on Wednesday than it did on Tuesday.
With search and the rescue operation not making much headway, no contact has been established with the trapped miners even after 21 days of the disaster.
Fifteen miners are trapped inside a 370-foot-deep illegal coal mine in East Jaintia Hills district since December 13 after water from a nearby river gushed in, puncturing the mine wall.
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Mumbai family deaths: FDA finds no watermelon vendor in area to check for affected stock
Mumbai (PTI): The Food and Drug Administration team probing the cause of death of four members of a family in south Mumbai's JJ Marg area have not been able to zero in on any watermelon vendor in the vicinity to check if the fruit had a role to play in the ill-fated incident, an official said on Thursday.
The Dokadia family, residents of Ghari Mohalla on Ismail Kurte Road, had hosted a get-together of relatives on the night of April 25. At around 1 am, hours after the guests had left, Abdullah Dokadia (40), his wife Nasreen (35), and daughters Ayesha (16) and Zaineb (13) ate pieces of a watermelon.
They suffered severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea in the early hours of April 26 and were rushed to a local hospital before being referred to the government-run J J Hospital where all four died during treatment.
"The FDA team visited the house of Dokadia and collected samples of chicken pulao and watermelon pieces. After two days, the leftover chicken pulao had developed fungus growth. The team also tried to locate watermelon vendors to check for any affected lots," he said.
But no vendors were found in the area for the past two days, preventing the FDA team from getting samples, the official added.
The FDA has requested the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) to share the report on the food samples collected by them, he added.
A senior Mumbai police official said the force is waiting for FSL reports in the case, adding that questions on presence of sedatives etc in the fruit could be answered only then.
The statements of the kin of the deceased are being recorded to ascertain if it is a case of mass suicide, and it is being checked if the Dokadia family were in debt or distressed over some issue, the police official said.
