A 40 feet deep and 10 feet wide crater developed on Friday morning in the backyard of a government primary school around 40 km from Dhanbad district headquarters, allegedly due to illegal mining.

There were no injury reports as the school, Naya Prathmik Vidyalaya, is closed because of the statewide lockdown.

Local residents, who rushed to the site, nabbed one person for his alleged involvement in illegal mining and handed him over to the Nirsa Police.

Police barricaded the area and informed the Eastern Coal field Limited management about the incident.

Former Nirsa MLA, Arup Chatterjee, said, “The incident took place due to the illegal mining and had the school been open a major tragedy could have taken place.”

“A nexus of illegal miners, some local leaders and local police are operating illegal mines leading to several people dying due to incidents like land subsidence or roof collapse,” said Chatterjee to The Telegraph Online.

Chatterjee suggested filling the illegal mining sites with the fly ash abundantly found in Nirsa area to seal the site and said that at present the administration carries out the filling of the illegal mining sites with the soil and mud which is again dug up by illegal miners.

Officer in Charge of Nirsa Police station, Umesh Singh confirmed the incident of land subsidence in Kuhuka Basti but denied any illegal mining as the result of the incident.

“We predict the blasting carried in the adjoining mines of ECL as the cause of the accident and have informed the ECL management which will carry out the filling up of the crater” said Singh.