India's mining mafia - revisited

Mining is completely banned in the Neugal riverbed, but it goes on a large scale daily.

A month after locals, cops and the Mining Department dismantled a road leading to an illegal mining site on the Neugal riverbed, the mafia reconstructed it. The illegal road was constructed to allow heavy machinery to reach the riverbed. When villagers learned the road had been reconstructed by filling in the deep trenches, they reported the matter.

They said the mining mafia constructed many roads on forest and government lands, but the Mining Department failed to check activity in the Neugal.

2 officals escaped unhurt when goons of the mining mafia attacked them near the Neugal river where they had gone to check illegal mining after complaints of villagers. They said the illegal mining was continuous and widespread. A JCB and two haul trucks were engaged in the illegal cutting of gravel banks.

A lathi is a heavy stick often of bamboo bound with iron used in India as a weapon.

The wealth of the country is looted openly with regulation virtually non-existent.

As they reached the mining site the men were attacked with lathis. Rivers and hills in the country are dug illegally every day.

See ----->India’s sand mafia