Three people, including two minor girls, were killed and two women critically injured on Sunday afternoon after a clay mine collapsed in Madhya Pradesh’s Singrauli district.
The incident occurred at around 1.21 pm in Parsohar village, when a group of women and children entered a shallow pit to extract chhui, a soft, white-and-yellow clay traditionally used for plastering houses. While they were there, a large section of the loose earth caved in, burying five people under tonnes of soil.
Police identified the deceased as Preeti Singh (10) and Basanti (16), both residents of Harhawa village, and Phoolmati Yadav (50), a resident of Bandha village. Two other women, Kaushalya Singh (50) of Parsohar village and Sakmuni Singh (45) of Chandreha village, were pulled out alive but unconscious and rushed to a hospital, where their condition remains serious.
The incident has put a spotlight on the dangers of informal mining and soil extraction in tribal and rural belts of Madhya Pradesh, where women and children routinely enter unstable pits to collect mud for domestic use, often at the cost of their lives.
Police said the victims were inside the pit when the collapse occurred. “Five people were extracting chhui from the mine when the soil suddenly gave way. Three died on the spot, while two women were rescued in an unconscious state and sent for treatment,” said a police officer, adding that an inquiry has been initiated.
The collapse triggered panic in the village, with family members and neighbours rushing to the site after hearing screams from beneath the earth. Villagers initially attempted to dig out the trapped victims using spades and pickaxes before informing the sarpanch and police.
“We heard shouting and ran towards the mound. The soil had already settled by then. We tried digging with whatever tools we had,” said Satish Singh, a local resident, adding, “This mound has red and yellow soil, which people often dig for household work. We have warned people many times that it is dangerous, but poverty forces them to keep coming back.”
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Police teams from the Kundwar outpost and Jiawan police station reached the spot shortly after being alerted. Given the depth of the collapse and the unstable soil, an earth excavator machine was requisitioned to carry out the rescue. The bodies and injured women were eventually pulled out after several hours of excavation.
Police said the victims were found at different depths, indicating that the collapse happened in stages rather than as a single slide. “The soil here is extremely loose. Once it starts slipping, it keeps falling inward,” a police officer involved in the rescue said.
Police have sent the bodies for postmortem examination. Officials said further investigation would examine whether the site had been previously identified as hazardous and whether adequate warnings or restrictions were enforced.