An official from Madhya Pradesh was crushed to death by an illegal mining tractor

In the Shahdol district of Madhya Pradesh, a tractor-trolley used for the illicit transportation of sand crushed and killed a patwari, an officer of the local revenue department, according to police on Sunday.

According to an official, the driver of the car has been taken into custody by the police in relation to the event that happened on Saturday night at midnight.

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The tractor-trolley carrying sand that had been unlawfully mined was stopped near the Son River in the Gopalpur region by a patrolling team of government officials, led by patwari Prasann Singh, according to Rajkumar Mishra, the in-charge of the Deolond police station. When Singh, a patwari assigned to Khadda in the Bohari tehsil, arrived to the river, he noticed a tractor-trolley transporting sand and attempted to stop it. However, the driver ran him over, according to Singh.

According to the official, Singh was killed instantly, and the accused driver took off with the car. Shahdol’s Superintendent of Police (SP), Kumar Prateek, told reporter that the police started their investigation right away and located the tractor and its driver, 25-year-old Shubham Vishwakarma, who was taken into custody early on Sunday.

Vishwakarma, who lives in Maihar district and is about 8 km from the crime location, has a case under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), he said.

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He said that the owner of the tractor has been located and that it has been seized. District Collector Vandana Vaidya stated that a team consisting of representatives from the tax, mining, and police departments had examined the region on November 23 in response to accusations of illicit sand mining.

The same region saw the seizure of illegally mined sand on Thursday and Friday, according to her. According to the collector, until 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of Beohari and other officials clamped down on any illegal activities in the region.

But, she added, the incident happened when Singh and three of his colleagues went to the location to assess the circumstances afterwards.