Raju Gond, a seasoned labourer, has spent over a decade mastering the techniques of digging pits and sieving sand in the mines of Panna, Madhya Pradesh, in search of diamonds.
On Wednesday, he discovered something glittering in his hands that resembled glass.
It was a 19.22-carat diamond, which experts informed him could fetch about Rs 80 lakh or more at a 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.
Overjoyed by the discovery, he expressed his primary wish for his children’s future. “I want to take care of my children’s education. All I hope is that with this, my financial hardship will ease.”
Panna, a district in northern Madhya Pradesh, has been a notable source of diamond mining for centuries.
Gond plans to first pay off his family’s Rs 5-lakh loan and also intends to distribute the proceeds from the auction among his family members. He hopes to build a house and acquire some farmland with the remaining money. “I will keep looking for diamonds even after this,” Gond said.
Panna, despite being a relatively underdeveloped district in northern Madhya Pradesh, has a long history of diamond mining. However, the diamond deposits in Panna have significantly declined over the years, primarily due to excessive mining activities.
These days, finding a large diamond is rare.
Last year, a Noida resident discovered an 8-carat diamond worth Rs 35 lakh.
For decades, the diamond mines have provided an alternative livelihood for the predominantly tribal population of Panna.
Earnings are modest—Rs 250-300 for eight hours of work. Most remaining deposits are believed to be in protected forest areas where 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 in the morning to a mine in Krishna Kalyanpur Patti village, leased by his father during the monsoons—the only time the family can find time as agricultural work slows down. “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 an 8×8-metre pit and worked with his wife and relatives to search for the elusive gemstones. Before this, he drove a tractor for a living.
Stories of chance finds, like the Noida case, have kept Gond working in the mine. While the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) operates a mechanized diamond mining project in Panna, small-time workers like Gond do everything manually.
“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 discovering the stone, Gond deposited it with government authorities. Anupam Singh, an official from the Panna diamond office, said the diamond would be put up for sale in the next auction.