The Deadly Reality of Jharkhand’s Abandoned Coalfields

India was gearing up to welcome 2026. But Surendra Singh never saw the new year. The coal mine worker in Dhanbad lived near an abandoned underground coal mine, and on the cold night of December 29, carbon monoxide from the mine seeped into his home. He never saw the next day.

A month earlier, his neighbour, Priyanka Devi, 28, had died the same way.

Dhanbad, considered India’s coal capital, is home to Jharia’s abandoned underground coal mines, where a fire has burned for more than a century, causing the ground to cave in and release toxic gases. Jharkhand holds the largest coal reserves in the country. In the past year alone, at least seven incidents of gas leaks and land subsidence in its defunct mines have killed 20 people, according to multiple news reports.