Feb. 28 (UPI) -- A second body has been recovered from an illegal coal mine in northeastern India where two months ago 15 miners became trapped hundreds of feet underground when it flooded.
The Indian Navy and the National Disaster Response Force retrieved the body Wednesday from a 370-foot mine shaft known as a rat hole due to their size, the Hindustan Times reported.
The unidentified body was then taken to Civil Hospital Khliehrait for examination, said Santos Kumar, the NDRF assistant commandant overseeing the operation.
"The body is intact but highly decomposed and beyond recognition. That's why we immediately handed it over to the district administration for further procedures," he said.
He added that they attempted to retrieve a third body but failed.
"The first one was retrieved by the second body slipped the claws of the underwater remotely operated vehicle. Then a third body was spotted last Sunday and another the following day but they could not be retrieved," he said. "The one we retrieved today is the fifth body."
Kumar said four rescuers and a diver entered the main shaft at around 1 p.m. Wednesday, local time, along with an inflatable boat and a body bag.
The body was located about 200 feet down the mine shaft and was retrieved with the help of remote-controlled underwater vehicle, the Times of India reported.
The miners became trapped in the mine Dec. 13 when one of them may have accidentally punctured the wall, allowing water from the Lytein River to flood the cavity.
In mid-January, the first body was retrieved from the coal mine in Lumthari village of East Jaintia Hills.
The recovery operation will continue as the Supreme Court had directed the state to retrieve the miners "dead or alive" following the political firestorm, as political opponents in Congress criticized the state for failing to rescue them.
Rat hole mining was outlawed in India in 2014.
