After 4,000 MT in July, another 18,000 MT of illegal coal goes missing in Meghalaya
Justice (retd) B.P. Katakey has urged the East Jaintia Hills district admin to file an FIR & initiate a probe into the “missing” coal.
A file image of a coal mound at Rymbai in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills (Photo: @SaketGokhale/X)
Shillong, Sept 24: Another 18,000 metric tonnes of illegally mined coal have “gone missing” from East Jaintia Hills, Justice (retd) B.P. Katakey revealed in his 32nd interim report.
Katakey, who heads the one-man committee appointed by the Meghalaya High Court to oversee coal transportation in the state, said he has alerted the district administration and sought a probe.
“I have asked the district administration of East Jaintia Hills to file an FIR and start an investigation over the missing coal,” Katakey told The Assam Tribune.
He described the case as “the tip of the iceberg,” pointing out that authorities have so far verified just 138 coal dumps, even though more than 1,500 coordinates of suspected illegal coal sites have been identified.
The illegal dumps were first detected during an aerial survey conducted in March by Garuda, a private company engaged by the state government on the High Court’s direction.
Katakey said over 1,300 dumps remain to be verified. Initial estimates suggest that nearly 1.8 lakh metric tonnes of coal have been illegally mined and stored at these sites.
However, he added, only physical verification by district authorities can confirm how much coal is still left.
This is the second such case in two months. In July, Katakey’s 31st interim report flagged the disappearance of about 4,000 metric tonnes of coal from two designated storage sites at Rajaju in West Khasi Hills and Diengngan in Ri-Bhoi.
Meanwhile, on September 22, the Meghalaya government informed the High Court that it has ordered a fresh probe into the “missing” 4,000 metric tonnes of illegally mined coal. In an affidavit filed before the court, the state government said a final report on the matter is expected within a month.
Earlier, Union Coal Minister Gangapuram Kishan Reddy, replying to a question by Shillong MP Ricky Syngkon in the Lok Sabha, said the Centre would seek a clarification from the state government on the matter.
With inputs from Agencies