[STIRI Lume] How India's 'rat-hole' miners freed 41 tunnel workers

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"I removed the last rock and saw them. Then I went to the other side. They hugged us, lifted us. And thanked us for taking them out," Munna Qureshi told reporters on Tuesday evening after coming out of a Himalayan tunnel in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

He was among a dozen or so workers who cleared the last stretch of debris by hand to help free 41 workers who had been trapped in the under-construction 4.5km (3-mile) Silkyara tunnel for more than 16 days. A landslide had caused a portion of the tunnel - part of the $1.5bn (£1.19bn), 890km-long flagship Char Dham project to connect key Hindu pilgrim sites - to cave in on 12 November.

Mr Qureshi, 29, has been described by officials and media alike as a "rat-hole" miner and hailed as "the hero of the rescue operation". He and his mates crawled into the 800m pipe and cleared the 12m debris of the last stretch in under 18 hours, according to Lt-Gen Syed Ata Hasnain, a senior official overseeing the operation. They were "confident and nonchalant" about the work they were doing, willing to "go in with anything... no special tools as such", he told NDTV.

Miners employing the hazardous "rat hole" technique engage in the excavation of narrow, purpose-built pits in the ground, large enough for one person to go down and extract coal. The nimble miners - usually slim boys and men - carry loads of wet coal in baskets up on wooden slats flanking the walls of these mines, mostly found in the north-eastern state of Meghalaya. The Supreme Court banned it in 2014, but it continues illegally.

                                                                                                                                                                  

                     SURSA