Death of Activist Nun Highlights Reach of India’s ‘Resource Mafia’

Indian catholic nuns hold candles as they attend aa prayer meeting organised to condemn the murder of Sister Valsa John on November 21, 2011

The town of Jharia never sleeps. When the sun sets over its coalfields, illegal miners take over, toiling through the night. Jharia’s second shift is controlled by men like Israel Bhai, who started mining at age 7. “I had to survive somehow and this was the easiest way,” he recalls. By 2007, Bhai headed a small-scale syndicate of 12 men and women; today, he employs 50 people. Under cover of darkness, he leads them 15 stories underground, seeking out un-scoured nooks. If the police come, Bhai bribes them or sends his team scrambling through a secret tunnel. But, he says, local officials “generally don’t bother us.”

In India, illegal mining is a big, booming business. In Jharkhand State, where Bhai lives, and neighboring Bihar, the so-called ‘coal mafia’ rule over an empire worth an estimated $400 million, estimates India’s Central Bureau of Investigation. Bribes are bountiful and the consequences of speaking out can be dire: on the night of Nov. 16, a 52-year-old nun and anti-illegal coal mining activist, Sister Valsa John, was hacked to death in Jharkhand. Her family members say she had been getting death threats from the syndicates she opposed. [more]

SOURCE

Time