Labourer finds Rs 80 lakh diamond in Madhya Pradesh: ‘Will pay off Rs 5 lakh loan, take care of children’s education’

It was a 19.22-carat diamond, which experts told him could fetch about Rs 80 lakh or more at government auction.

“I knew this was a diamond when I finally held it in my hands. I worked the whole afternoon to get this stone. But I had worked for 10 years to get to this point,” Gond said.

Ecstatic over the find, he said all he wants is a bright future for his children. “I want to take care of my children’s education. All I hope is that with this, my financial hardship will ease.”

Panna, a relatively backward district in northern Madhya Pradesh, has been a significant source of diamond mining for centuries.

Gond will first pay off his family’s Rs 5-lakh loan, and says he also plans on distributing the proceeds from the auction among his family members. He hopes to build his own home and get some farmland with the leftover money. “I will keep looking for diamonds even after this,” Gond said.

Panna, a relatively backward district in northern Madhya Pradesh, has been a significant source of diamond mining for centuries. However, the diamond deposits in Panna have declined significantly over the years due to several factors, but mainly due to excessive mining activities.

These days, finding a large diamond there is rare.

Last year, a Noida resident found an 8-carat diamond worth Rs 35 lakh.

The diamond mines have been an alternative source of livelihood for the largely tribal population of Panna for decades.

The earnings are modest – Rs 250-300 for eight hours of work. Most of the remaining deposits are said to fall under protected forest areas and mining is prohibited. The government is “working on legal remedies among other solutions to expand mining operations in the region”.

Gond had set out early morning to a mine in Krishna Kalyanpur Patti village, which his father had leased out during the monsoons — the one time when Gond’s family can find time as work dries up in the agricultural fields. “We mostly do odd jobs like agriculture work or as masons. We do diamond mining in the hope of finding additional income,” he said.

He paid a fee of Rs 200 to set up a 8×8-metre pit and worked with his wife and relatives to look for the elusive gem stones. Before this, he drove a tractor for a living.

The stories of chance finds like the Noida case have kept Gond working in the mine. While the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) runs a mechanised diamond mining project in Panna, small-time workers like Gond do it all by hand.

“We use some shovels to dig a pit and remove rock. We wash them in a sieve and look through hundreds of stones in the hopes that one would turn out to be a diamond.”

After finding the stone, Gond deposited it with the government authorities. Anupam Singh, an official from the Panna diamond office, said the diamond would be put for sale in the next auction.