Three personnel of the Odisha Fire Services team, engaged in rescue operation at the coal mine at Ksan in Meghalaya, were injured after unidentified miscreants pelted stones at the bus when the team was returning to their base camp on Thursday night.
The police said that the incident took place around 9 pm on Thursday when the Fire Services personnel were returning to their base camp from near the Ksan coal mine in the East Jaintia Hills.
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“We were intimated that the Fire Service Team was pelted with stones last night. We rushed to the spot immediately. No one was injured during the incident but the bus was partially damaged,” Additional Superintendent of Police of East Jaintia Hills district, Lethindra Sangma told Northeast Now.
Sangma said that there was night blockade on some areas of the state by some civil society organizations in protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016.
“We came to know that some organizations have called for night blockade of highways in the area. When the bus carrying the Fire Service team arrived in the spot, the blockade supporters pelted with stone without realizing that it is carrying the rescuers,” said Sangma.
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Sources, however, said that the side glass door of the bus was damaged and three personnel were injured.
The Fire Service Odisha team was engaged in rescue operation of the 15 coal miners who had been trapped inside the coal mine at Ksan since December 13. Although multiple agencies including the Indian Navy, NDRF, SDRF, Coal India Limited and NDMA have been putting up their best efforts to find the trapped miners it is yet to yield any result.
Meanwhile, the Coal India limited continue pumping the water from the old shaft last night from 8:30 pm to till Friday pumping out 680400 litres of water. The preparation for insertion of the second pump with 120 HP in the second old shaft is going on, officials said.
The Indian Navy divers are utilizing their ROV in sanitizing and surveying other adjacent shaft to enable the divers to dive in the shafts.
The Kirloskar Brothers Limited on the other hand has been pumping the water from the main shaft of the mine. Since Thursday night till Friday afternoon they have pumped out 15, 75,000 litres of water.