Ranchi, Sept. 10: Illegal mining is a symbol of hunger’s victory over the fear of death, say coal officials.

Young and able-bodied men enter abandoned mines through manmade “rat holes”, barely 4ft by 4ft in dimension. A pulley and a bucket take them inside the pit. They go as deep as 200ft. Their guides are retired mining sardars and overmen, who know the location of coal pillars and seams better than mining engineers.

“This is rat hole mining,” explains a former director of Central Coalfields Limited. “And if the hole is wider, it is called pothole mining.”

But the truth is uglier. If there is land subsidence, the holes turn into death traps for these young men. And their kith and kin flee — sometimes with as negligible an evidence as the slippers of the victims — so that the police don’t come after them pursuing a case of illegal mining.

The worst part of this social malaise is that the poor and the hungry become pawns of the coal mafia. The mafia bosses are just seemingly benevolent. They distribute bicycles for free so that the consignment of coal can be ferried to unauthorised depots. In return, all these men get for risking their lives is a paltry Rs 200-250 a day.

From the depots the coal is supplied to brick kilns and to industrial units such as sponge iron, which do not have any official coal supply. “Though no coal-consuming units are to be located within a specified distance of a mine, agencies flout norms and industries thrive on illegal coal,” said an official.

Every day, at least 150 bicycles enter the state capital. Each carries around one quintal of illegally procured coal, worth between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500 depending on it grade or whether it is raw or burnt, said a security official.

Surprisingly, these coal-laden bicycles coming from the Patratu area and cross at least three police stations up to Kanke Road, which also houses the chief minister’s residence and office. Some also cross the CBI office at Morabadi. The only other route is from the Ramgarh side via Chutupalu Ghat.

So, hundreds of weather-beaten men push bicycles up steep slopes, ferrying nothing less than a quintal of coal along a stretch of 45-50 km.

“Illegal coal is ferried openly daily and yet the law enforcing agencies, including the police, turn a blind eye. But if there is an accident in a coal pit like the recently in Godhar, they begin hounding coal officials,” said a senior coal official.

He recalled after the May 2004 mine subsidence, which killed six persons in Baniadih, Giridih, the police arrested the project and security officers. The two had filed complaints with the police and had informed the deputy commissioner in March. The latter had even brought out a public notice warning of strict action in case of illegal mining.

Between 1977 and 1980, a project officer in Baniadih had filed 360 FIRs with the police, but 18 years later the scene has only worsened. The CCL security department filed 131 reports in 2007-08 on illegal mining.

The police, however, registered only 15 cases, claimed CCL executive director (security) Captain V.K. Anand. In April-July this year, 29 FIRs had been filed.

The scale of the problem is huge. At least 5,000 bicycles ferry illegal coal across the state every day. If each bicycle carries 100kg, five lakh kg or around 500 tonne of coal is sold a day through this illegal channel.

And in one financial year, 1.82 lakh tonne of coal is pilfered. If we take Rs 1,000 as the lowest and conservative base price per tonne of coal, the annual loss stands at Rs 18 crore. This excludes the premium in the black market.

The only silver lining appears to be a report prepared by XLRI and the Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad. When he was the Union coal minister, Shibu Soren had wanted to form cooperatives among illegal miners so that their exploitation and perpetual exposure to death was checked.

“That report is with the state government. Since Soren is now the chief minister, let us hope the co-operative system is implemented soon,” a senior official said.

The only other option is that the coal companies fill up the abandoned mines and return the land to the state. This would at least end the blame game between the police and coal companies, if not provide succour to the several hungry mouths in the coal belt.