Who was Jaswant Singh Gill, the insipration behind Akshay Kumar's Mission Raniganj?

Akshay Kumar's new film Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue opened in theatre across India. The film, helmed by Tinu Suresh Desai, has Akshay Kumar playing a mining engineer who rescued 65 miners from a coal field in Raniganj, West Bengal in 1989. The film is based on an actual incident and Kumar plays Jaswant Singh Gill, who led the rescue mission when a coal mine in Raniganj was flooded leaving many miners trapped inside for two days. 

Who was Jaswant Singh Gill?

Born in Amritsar in 1940, Jaswant Singh Gill studied at Khalsa School and later took admission in BSc (non-medical) at Khalsa College (Amritsar). He studied BSc (Honours) at the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad. Gill eventually joined Coal India Limited in 1973 from where he retired in 1998 as Engineer-in-chief.

Gill's rescue mission at Mahabir Colliery, Raniganj, West Bengal in 1989 remains one of the high points of his career. He saved the lives of 65 miners who were trapped in a flooded coal mine. He also got the moniker of Capsule Gill after the incident.

What happened at Mahabir Colliery in November 1989?

At the time of the accident, 232 miners were working the night shift on November 13, 1989. They were tasked to excavate coal through explosions inside the 320-foot-deep mine. 

At around 4 a.m., there was a sudden influx of water, and the mine got flooded. The 161 miners who were near the two lifts in the pit were rescued immediately, but 71 of them were far off and couldn’t reach the lift due to the water.

Fortunately, there was a telephone connection between the borehole and the surface, through which a message was sent that 65 miners had taken shelter at a rise part of the pit, but six of them had gone missing.

Jaswant Singh Gill’s role in the rescue operation

Senior engineer Jasawant Gill led one of the teams formed for rescue operations. Gill came up with the idea of extracting the stranded miners through a capsule injected inside a dead hole. 

Read: Mission Raniganj review: Akshay Kumar saves the day in an over the top survival thriller

The steel capsule was constructed in 72 hours and after a few trial runs up and down the borehole, rescue of men began on November 16 at 2.30 am. Gill insisted on going into the capsule himself to bring out the trapped men. 

There was initial opposition from senior officers of Coal India over Gill going down the pit but he did enter the capsule and brought out all of the 65 men one by one by 8:30 am. Initially, it took 15 minutes for one round trip of the capsule. A 12-tonne crane was put into service later on for lowering and raising the capsule and this reduced the cycle time to just 3 minutes.

To celebrate Gill’s act of bravery, Coal India Ltd announced November 16 as ‘Rescue Day’.

Gill was also honoured with the highest civilian bravery award, 'Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha Padak' by President Ramaswamy Venkataraman in 1991.

Limca Book of Records has certified this operation as a national record in the history of coal mining.

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