Meghalaya: Navy divers continue efforts to retrieve body of second miner

The UROV also stumbled on tell-tale signs like spades, a wooden cart and then located the dead miner.

Shillong:  The Indian Navy divers on Sunday made efforts to retrieve the body of a miner, which was detected on Saturday by an underwater remotely operated vehicle (UROV) inside a rat-hole coal mine at Ksan village in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills, where 13 more remained trapped for 45 days now.

"The Navy divers are trying to retrieve the second body detected inside the rat-hole mine but due to many obstacles which include exhaust pipes used by the coal miners inside the mine and turbidity of the water, the retrieval has become very difficult," rescue operations spokesperson Reginald Susngi said.

A 15-member team of Navy divers from Visakhapatnam detected the second body with the help of the UROV inside the rat-hole coal mine but through a complex maize of sub rat-hole mines.

The UROV also stumbled on tell-tale signs like spades, a wooden cart and then located the dead miner.

"They (Navy) are making all efforts. Let us hope they will be able to pull out the body soon," he said.

The second body which is yet to be identified was detected from the same rat-hole coal mine where the UROV found the first body of a miner over a month after the miners were trapped inside the coal mine on December 13.

IANS