When I boarded the afternoon flight from the hustle of Delhi on 6 February 2026, my destination was Guwahati, Assam. Reporter Javed Parvesh, who had flown in from Kolkata, joined me at Guwahati airport. From there, it was a long drive to Shillong, the heart of Meghalaya.
By 11:00 pm, as Shillong lay tucked under a blanket of cold, my mind was already circling those coal mines in the East Jaintia Hills—a place I had yet to see. Even then, not many people knew about the tragedy that had struck the group of men trapped there.
The next morning, at 6:00 am sharp, we set off from Shillong in another car. Our only guide was a Google Maps location. When we reached 'Myndihati Cement Bazar' near the Jaintia Hills, the map lost its way. The people we asked for directions pointed us in conflicting directions. It did not take long to realise that the journey required a three-hour trek through dense forests and that we could not go any further without a four-wheel-drive vehicle. While Javed went from shop to shop inquiring about the path to the mine, I bought some fruit to carry along for the forest journey.
The hunt for a vehicle began. Among the Khasi-speaking locals at Cement Bazar, our questions in a mix of English and Hindi often went unanswered. Finally, we flagged down a passing Bolero. The driver demanded 7,500 rupees. When asked about the distance, there was no clear answer. "The money isn't for the distance, sir; if I take this car through those rocky and muddy forest paths and back, the repairs alone will cost at least five thousand rupees," was the justification he gave to our driver. The truth of those words became evident only after the journey began.
It was a battered vehicle, missing number plates on both the front and back. Dust billowed through the gap where the music system should have been, flooding the interior like a deluge. As the jeep surged towards the Saipung Reserve Forest, it was not so much driving as it was violently lunging from rock to rock. With every jolt, it felt as though the vehicle would overturn. During one such leap, Javed’s head hit the overhead metal bar, leaving him with a cut. My biggest challenge was maintaining my balance while tightly clutching my camera bag to prevent it from being flung off the seat. After nearly two and a half hours of this gruelling journey, we finally reached the vicinity of the disaster site in the Lyngkyrdem (Thangskai) region.
The first things I noticed were the uniforms of the NDRF and SDRF. Unlike typical disaster sites, there were no media swarms or crowds. Only a team of about sixty people, including the rescuers, stood in the middle of that forest. Although the National Green Tribunal had banned mining here in 2014, illegal operations continued unabated, shielded by politicians and the powerful. It is estimated that there are about 22,000 such abandoned 'rat-hole' mines in Meghalaya.
Before long, a large crane hauled up an iron bucket from the depths. Inside were two SDRF officials, drenched in the black of coal soot. They had descended nearly 30 metres in that bucket. From that depth, five large tunnels branch out, leading to hundreds of sub-tunnels just wide enough for a human to crawl through. The faces of those officers mirrored the sheer helplessness of battling the suffocating darkness of those rat-holes.
Following them, some local rat-miners came up in the same bucket. The grief on the face of one local man was unlike anything else I saw there. Just before we arrived, two more bodies had been recovered, bringing the official death toll of the disaster to 27. However, locals hinted that over 50 people remained trapped inside. Most of the victims are migrant labourers from Assam and Nepal, who risk their lives for a daily wage of 800 rupees, crawling into these narrow burrows.
It is believed that an explosion in a nearby mine triggered the disaster by igniting methane gas, which then spread through the interconnected underground labyrinths. Bodies have been found as far as 750 metres from the main shaft. Many of the injured have suffered up to 80% burns. The police stated that the mine operators fled with the workers immediately after the accident. While two people have been arrested, the actual 'sponsors' who fund these mines remain in the shadows.
By 4:30 pm, darkness slowly began to drape over the forest. There was no mobile internet range; only the signals of certain service providers flickered occasionally for phone calls. I needed to wash away the coal dust and the exhaustion of the journey, but more importantly, I had to send this story and the photographs to the office. As we began our journey back towards the hotel, the Thangskai region in the heart of that vast forest felt as silent as a graveyard. In the past, this earth yielded coal wrapped in black soot; these days, it delivers human bodies wrapped in white shrouds.
Josekutty Panackal is Picture Editor of Malayala Manorama, based in Delhi