ROURKELA: In a major breakthrough into the illegal coal mining in the forests of the Hemgir block, police arrested four villagers for their involvement in illegal excavation and transportation of coal.
They were identified as Samir Dansana, Gelananda Majhi, Hemananda Seth and Alok Singh, all from villages under Hemgir police limits. A motor-bike and two tractors were seized by police.
After the news of illegal coal mining came to light eight days ago, the local police had activated its informer’s network. It led to clues based on which the arrests were made.
Sundargarh SDPO Nirmal Mohapatra said that the arrested persons were directly involved in illegal coal mining and were direct beneficiaries.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the accused used to engage villagers on daily wages for manual digging of coal forests and used tractors to stack large quantities of coal at suitable points before disposing it to different buyers. They used forest routes to carry out this action.
The accused confessed to be involved in illegal coal mining for above a year. They used to pay Rs 1,200-1,300 to daily wagers for one trip of tractor and sell the coal for Rs 1,700-1,800 per tonne against the prevailing market price of around Rs 2,000 per tonne.
The SDPO said that the consumers of the illegally mined coal were mostly found to be brick-kiln units operating along Odisha-Chhattisgarh border. So far, no involvement of large scale coal mafia in the illegal mining has been found but the police suspects many more villagers might be involved in this act. Further investigation is underway, the SDPO added.
Meanwhile, the enforcement squad of Steel and Mines department continued its search in the forests affected with illegal mining for the third consecutive day on Saturday. The squad has been using drone survey technology for complete mapping of the affected forests.
Department sources said the drone survey is primarily to take estimated measurement of coal pits with depth and use the software of the department to help quantify the amount of coal lost to illegal coal mining.
An administrative team on March 4 had first raided Telendihi revenue forest leading to detection of estimate 60 to 100 coal pits and seizure of around 142 tonnes stacked coals.
Subsequently, the Ratansara reserve forest and the Bhograkachhar revenue forest were inspected and about 100 tonnes were found dumped at multiple points with scores of coal pits. An illegal brick kiln with above two lakh units of finished bricks was also detected inside the Ratansara reserve forest.