meghalaya miners
District Deputy Commissioner FM Dopth said the body was decomposed and efforts were on to retrieve it.
The body had disintegrated and slipped to bottom of the main shaft in course of the Navy’s efforts to pull it out.
Family members of the trapped miners have been waiting anxiously for news of their loved ones and are visiting the site regularly.
The navy divers had also found a body of one of the 15 trapped miners.
15 miners have been trapped in the Meghalaya coal mine since 13 December.
An official said the police have been told that their probe should reach a logical conclusion after taking into account all 1,200 cases of illegal rat-hole mining in East Garo Hills, South-West Khasi Hills and West and East Jaintia Hills districts.
The National Green Tribunal on 4 January imposed a Rs 100-crore fine on the state government for its failure to curb illegal mining.
The Supreme Court said it is a "question of life and death".
The rat-hole mine, located on top of a hillock fully covered with trees in East Jaintia Hills district, had got flooded when water from the nearby Lytein river gushed into it, trapping the miners.
Fifteen miners are trapped inside a 370-foot-deep illegal coal mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district since 13 December after water from a nearby river gushed in, puncturing the mine wall.