LAGATAR24 NETWORK
Dumka, May 14: Mystery shrouds the death of four persons while picking coal from one of the dozens of illegal coal mines at Badalpada-Lutiyapahadi village under Shikaripara police station limit of the district last evening on Friday.
The local administration too has been tight-lipped over the matter with officials neither admitting nor denying it.
Reports, however, suggest that all the four persons were native of nearby Gamhara village, a Pahadiya (primitive tribe group) dominated hamlet that used to pick coal from those coal mines illegally being operational in the locality through a well established racket of coal mafias.
“All the four deceased villagers had gone to pick coal from the coal mine where two of them died seemingly after inhaling some poisonous gas emanating from the mines as they moved deep inside the tunnel,” sources said, adding that rest of the two coal pickers who were anyhow brought outside the tunnel by the villagers died enroute to hospital in neighbouring Bengal.
All the four deceased coal pickers were later cremated on Friday night in a hurried manner so as to escape legal recourse.
“A police team was rushed to Badalpada after getting information about the incident of the death of some coal pickers but did not get any evidence,” Dumka SP Ambar Lakra said, adding that the incident was being ascertained as yet.
