Those killed in the incident have been identified as 40-year-old Srimaya Ale of Kot Durbar-6, Tanahun, her daughter eight-year-old Binisara Ale, 22-year-old Sumit Pariyar of Kaski and nine-year-old Ambika Rai of Lekhnath. [break]
Binisara was a first grader at the school while Ambika was a third grader. Police said the children had gone to the mine with their parents. Ambika´s parents also worked as laborers at the mine.
Kaski District Development Committee (DDC) had banned sand extraction along the Ratopahiro area at Lekhnath-13.
However, the secret mining operation came to light after the deaths. The four were extracting sand for construction of a building for Kalika Primary School.
Jeevan Gyawali, planning officer of the Kaski DDC, said an environmental impact assessment had concluded that it was unsafe to extract sand from the area. Extraction was being done in the area early in the morning and at night, according to Gyawali.
“We never saw extraction being done when we visited the site during day time,” he said, adding that the district administration had not shown interest in checking the illegal extraction.
The school has been selling sand extracted from the area for the past three years. Bishnu Basnet, vice-principal of the school, said the revenue collected from selling sand was being used to construct a school building and paying salary to three teachers.
Basnet said the school had contracted out the area to laborers at Rs 305,000 for this year. He claimed that mining was being done with consent from locals, community forest users, and DDC as the school does not have a source of income.
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