‘No one will remember us’: India’s hero ‘rat hole miners’ who helped rescue 41 men from the Himalayan tunnel

New Delhi CNN —

Just a few pieces of debris stood between Munna Qureshi and dozens of laborers who his team had been tasked with rescuing from deep inside a Himalayan tunnel after all previous attempts to free them had failed.

“I could hear the laborers gasping on the other side with excitement,” the 29-year-old said. “My heart was racing as I removed the last rock between us.”

Qureshi is among 12 specialized workers who were called by Indian authorities to help with last month’s rescue of 41 construction workers trapped in the collapsed tunnel in northern Uttarakhand state.

For nearly three weeks the construction workers were cut off from the world, some 60 meters inside the mountain, receiving food and air through a thin tube and frequent updates from rescuers outside.

One of the rescued workers (center) pictured after leaving the tunnel.

All 41 workers rescued from collapsed tunnel in India after 17-day ordeal

Engineers worked round the clock to drill a safe passage through the broken rock using a state of the art machine, while officials flew in experts to help with rescue efforts. But ultimately, after 17 days, it was Qureshi and his colleagues who succeeded in bringing the men to safety after the drill broke beyond repair just meters from the trapped workers.

Known locally as “rat hole miners”, they belong to a niche group of highly skilled,but poorly paid excavators who typically crawl through narrow tunnels to extract coal from deep within the ground.

It is a profession so dangerous it has been banned in some parts of the country. But it has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks, and the men celebrated as heroes by many across the country.

“Rat hole mining may be illegal,” Lt General Syed Ata