A part of the mosque in Dhanbad district of Jharkhand collapsed due to major subsidence on Wednesday (December 1) night. The mosque named Ada Masjid was built in 1981 and it is situated at Sijua in the Modidih Colliery area under Jogta police about 22 km from district headquarters.
The mosque spread over a 1000 sqft area has now become unusable due to damage. Luckily, no injury and casualty were reported in the incident. But it has left the residents of Sijua under fear. The locality is dominated by Muslims.
In the incident, the wazu khana, four toilets, the place of azan, main gate of the mosque, courtyard and a 50 feet tall minaret caved in.
“Incident took place around 8 PM. People heard a loud noise and in less than 10 minutes a part of the mosque collapsed. It created a huge ‘goaf’ (crater). Around 200 people had offered namaz at this mosque at 5 PM. Luckily, none was inside the mosque when it collapsed,” a resident told the OpIndia.
A team of BCCL led by safety officer Aish Ahmad reached the site along with a police team and barricaded the subsidence site. They also instructed people not to venture near it. BCCL has also started to fill up the crater.
Aish Ahmad said, “some mining activity has been carried out in the area by private miners before the nationalisation of coal mines and subsidence might have taken place due to that.”
Seven years back a small mosque at this locality had collapsed due to a landslide.
On being contacted, Dhanbad SP Sanjeev Kumar confirmed the incident. “A part of the mosque collapsed but people were safe. Modidih is the part of the coal mining area where cases of underground fire and goaf due to subsidence take place. Necessary steps are being taken by the authorities,” said SP.
After the incident, angry local residents accused the Bharat Cocking Coal Limited (BCCL) of negligence and they also forced a private coal excavator, Hilltop Hirise Private Limited, to stop mining work.
But the fact is that the BCCL that undertakes mining work in Modidih where the mosque is situated, had declared the area as dangerous. The coal company had also chalked out a plan for the rehabilitation of people living in the mining area. But due to local politics, the plan so far has not materialised.
