Dima Hasao District Magistrate Simanta Kumar Das said that the process of ‘dewatering’ or draining three abandoned mines within 500 metres of the ill-fated mine helped lower the water level within it. It is possible that these mines – each with a network of narrow tunnels branching out from the wall of a vertical pit – could be interconnected.

Rescue workers discover another dead body of a labourer body trapped inside the coal mine in Assam's Dima Hasao.

Umrangso: Rescuers, in a major breakthrough on Saturday, retrieved the bodies of three miners from the flooded rat-hole coal mine in Assam's Dima Hasa.