Tinsukia: Pranjal Moran was supposed to return home on the Magh Bihu in January. Instead, on Friday, April 7, Urvashi Moran and her three-year-old child Mousam waited outside Ledo Police Outpost for her husband’s dead body.
Urvashi had filed a missing person’s complaint with the Ledo Police Station in the heart of the coal mining belt of Assam in the Tinsukia district on February 4, 2023. It was only on April 7, a team of police officials led by Inspector General of Police (North East Range) Jitmal Doley recovered the body in a sack from a rat-hole mine in the Tirap Colliery run by North Eastern Coalfields, a subsidiary of Government-owned Coal India Limited.
Moran’s family now claims that the illegal mining business owner who covered up his death is still free.
In her complaint, Urvashi stated that her husband left for Ledo on January 6, 2023, saying that one Rajkamal Das and one B. Ganesh took him to work in a coal mine in Number 6 Colliery of Ledo Coalfield. On January 12, Moran called Urvashi from a colleague’s phone and told her that he will be reaching on the day of Magh Bihu on January 14. When Moran did not return home for several days, the family also received news that two workers died in a coal mine in Ledo. Urvashi stated in her complaint some of her family members went to Ledo to show his photograph on February 1 to other coal workers, when a worker informed her family members that Moran might have died trapped inside a rat hole mine in the colliery. While his body was not found, on February 2, one Hiren Gogoi (Mun) approached her family at Hukani village and offered Rs 5 lakhs as compensation to Urvashi Moran. Moran stated in her complaint she refused the compensation and demanded that the body of her husband must be returned immediately.
Initially, both Ledo and Langkasi police officials refused to take the missing person’s complaint, according to Urvashi’s brother, Umananda Mudoi Moran. “We first approached Langkasi police which has the jurisdiction of Moran’s village at Hukani. However, they refused to file the missing complaint and directed us to Ledo Police outpost under Margherita Police Station, which is situated next to these coal mines,” Moran told EastMojo.
As Urvashi and her family approached the Ledo Police outpost, the officer-in-charge refused to register the complaint. Umananda, also the District Secretary of the Chhatra Mukti Sangram Samity, a student body, staged a protest along with Moran’s wife forcing the police officials to register the complaint on February 4.
When the police investigation could not make any headway, Umananda took Urvashi to Guwahati seeking the help of media organisations to reach out to the senior police officials. It was only after Moran met Assam Director General of Police, G.P. Singh, the top police official, constituted a team to investigate and recover the body on April 7. A police team led by Jitmal Doley immediately swung into action and apprehended five persons involved in disposing of Moran’s mortal remains. Tinsukia police arrested Sanjay Mura, Gopinath Gogoi and Krishna Tasa initially while on April 6, Babu Paharia and Roop Chai were apprehended.
According to Ledo police officials, Paharia and Chai were involved in disposing of the body. When a team of SDRF and local police recovered the body from a rat hole mine, they found that the body was covered with phenol and salt. Urvashi recognised the partially-decomposed body from his clothes and the shoes at Ledo Police Outpost on Friday morning.
Curiously, IGP Doley said that while B. Ganesh, one of the prime accused in the case, was brought in for interrogation, he had secured bail. “There was no evidence that the concerned businessman was involved in illegal mining. He has said that he used to buy coal,” Doley said.
According to a source in the police department in Ledo, several youths from various districts of Assam have been working in illegal coal mines. The mining job pays better than other jobs in the region. In the case of Moran, he was not making enough doing menial jobs in various places around the Tinsukia district, which finally led to the coal mine job, according to his wife. “The wages at the steel factory in Tinsukia were not decent. So, he decided to go and work in coal mines in November last year. He also asked me to send his Aadhar and PAN Card copies for the employers at the coal mines,” Urvashi Moran told EastMojo.
With Urvashi seeking justice for her husband, two more families belonging to the Adivasi community have also claimed that their kin who had died in these mines were covered by their employers. For the families of Karthik Gowala and Vijay Munda, who lost their lives in the same coal mine situated in Tirap Colliery, it still is a long wait for justice. Curiously, in both cases, the bodies were returned to the family by their employers without a postmortem.
According to Ignatius Ekka, an advocate from Johar Legal Associates, a lawyers’ collective based in Doomdooma town of Tinsukia, Ledo police officials did not file a police complaint. “On February 22, 2023, at around 11.00 AM under Tirap Colliery in Ledo there was an incident caused due to the negligence of the private miners, Rupam Chakraborty, Sanjay Thakur and Ksitish Debnath which led to the deaths of Gowala and Munda,” alleged Ekka in a press meet on April 5.
According to IGP Jitmal Doley, the accused persons involved in the deaths of Munda and Gowala were arrested. “For one incident there is no provision for registration of two cases. For that incident, a case has already been registered and involved persons arrested,” Doley told EastMojo.
However, Ekka said that police ought to have taken the complaint as these were fresh cases against the accused. “Two of the accused, Chakraborty and Debnath got anticipatory bail in a related incident. Thakur was arrested but released on bail,” added Ekka.
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Kranti Gowala, Karthik’s brother, a resident of Kathalguri in Pengeri, told EastMojo that Karthik started working in the coal mines for the medical treatment of his wife. “However, his wife died last year. He continued working in the mines for his children. He last came home to celebrate his daughter’s birthday and then he promised that he would have enough money later to properly conduct his wife’s rituals. He never returned,” said Gowala. Karthik’s three children which include a two-year-old infant are now under the care of his wife’s family and Gowala’s brother. On the other hand, Vijay Munda’s family refused to comment on the case.
Activists say that due to the large-scale illicit mining in the Ledo-Margherita region, hundreds of similar deaths might have been covered up by the mining mafia operating from the region. “It has been easy for the mining mafia to cover up these deaths largely because some police officials and illicit mining mafia are working closely. This has been proven in the ongoing Gauhati High Court case related to illegal coal mining in and around Dehing Patkai National Park close to Ledo region,” Devajit Moran, an environmental activist from the region told EastMojo.
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