Bodies of the five miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in Assam’s Dima Hasao district were recovered after 44 days on Wednesday.

“Today, the dewatering of the Umrangso mines was completed to a level where retrieval operations could be launched. The mortal remains of the remaining 5 miners have been recovered and brought up from the mine shaft. The process to identify the remains has been initiated,” chief minister Himanta Biswa Said in a post on X on Wednesday.

Of the four bodies recovered earlier, the first body was recovered on January 8 followed by three bodies on January 11 from the 300-feet-deep mines.

The search and rescue operations involved personnel from multiple security forces and departments, including the Army, the Special forces (Para), the SDRF, the NDRF, Assam Rifles, the DDMA, the police, local workers, including deep divers.

The identity of the bodies recovered on Wednesday is yet to be ascertained.

The names of the five missing persons released by the administration earlier were Mustafa Sheikh, 44, Hussain Ali, 30, Zakir Hussain, 38, Mustafa Sheikh, 44, all from Darrang district, Sarpa Barman, 46, from Korajhar district, and Sanjit Sarkar, 35, from Jalpaiguri district of Bengal.

An official told The Telegraph at least 148 personnel were involved in the search operations on Wednesday and that the recovery of the bodies will provide some sort of closure to the affected families.

Assembly din

The recovery of the bodies came on a day the Opposition Congress moved an adjournment motion in the Assam Assembly to discuss the January 6 coal mine tragedy.

Assembly Speaker Biswajit Daimary did not entertain the motion along with those moved by the AIUDF, Raijor Dal and the CPM on various issues along with the demand of the ruling BJP alliance to discuss the Justice (Retd) Biplab Kumar Sharma Commission report on the cash-for-job Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) scam, tabled in the Assembly on February 17.

The House had to be adjourned thrice after Question Hour due to the din raised by the Opposition parties and the BJP-led ruling alliance MLAs seeking adjournment to discuss their respective issues.

The Speaker said that they can seek discussion through other devices, while Assam chief minister later said the government was ready to discuss the issues.

The leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, Debabrata Saikia, said that the MLAs from the ruling alliance “disturbed” the proceedings by seeking discussion on the APSC report covering the period between 2013 and 2014, even though they had not formally moved the Speaker.

“It is very unfortunate. We wanted to know about the status of the search operations to recover the trapped bodies, who all were responsible for the mine tragedy, about rat hole mining and the government steps to check rat-hole mining,” Saikia said.

While the Congress wanted discussion on the coal mine tragedy, the AIUDF wanted discussion on alleged torture of detention camp inmates; CPM on coal syndicate and Raijor Dal MLA on APSC report on the irregularities committed in recruitment by the APSC during the tenure of Rakesh Paul as the chairman.