Three persons, including one woman, were reportedly killed inside an abandoned open-cast mine of the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL) in a village in West Burdwan's Kulti when a chunk of the coal roof fell on them while they were stealing coal on Tuesday morning.

Villagers of Kulti's Borira claimed two more persons were feared trapped.

Sources said that Borira residents launched a rescue operation and recovered three bodies.

Police, however, denied confirming the deaths. BCCL authorities also did not give any official statement about it.

BJP MLA from Kulti Ajay Poddar, present at the spot, confirmed the three deaths. "The CISF is supposed to guard the mine, and definitely it is their responsibility to stop infiltration. But what were the local police doing? Why do police not arrest coal pilferers?" he asked.

A Kulti police officer said: "We heard about an incident at the abandoned mine in Kulti. We have sent a police team to maintain law and order as people gathered in large numbers. We have no information about any death or casualty."

This incident comes at a time Enforcement Directorate (ED) has intensified probe into the multi-crore coal scam in Bengal. The ED recently summoned for questioning three alleged coal smugglers from the Asansol-Durgapur coal belt.

On Tuesday, after villagers had recovered three bodies, the BCCL also launched rescue work, local sources said, but no more bodies were recovered till evening.

A BCCL source said that the abandoned mine had earlier been cordoned off with barbed wire and campaigns on loudhailers carried out to warn people about not entering the mine. However, local sources alleged that villagers in hundreds steal coal from abandoned mines and sell it to brickfields and private iron and steel factories.

Last Thursday, the ED raided the office of the I-PAC, the poll strategist for Trinamool and the residence of its owner, Pratik Jain, reportedly in connection with the coal scam being probed by central agencies since 2020. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee went to the raid sites and took away physical and digital data that she alleged were confidential information related to her party, triggering a face-off between her and the BJP.