Local police denied miners were dying in the creeks.

"We have registered cases of theft of sand and also violations of environmental norms but there are no cases ever of drowning," said S D Jadhav, a senior police inspector with the local police station, when asked about the deaths.

Sandeep Khakha, a migrant worker from Chattisgarh who works on one of nine sand ports on a 16 km (10 mile) stretch of the Vasai Creek, said he saw two divers lose their lives last year.

For the creek bed is not smooth but has sand dunes measuring 1.5 to 2 metres in height and scooping out sand loosens these structures. The work can be fatal if a sand dune falls on a miner, burying him if he fails to right his balance.

"I never lose my grip on the metal rod. If I lose my balance, I am gone," said Khakha.

"It is pitch dark under the water. I just feel a wall of sand. I have to dig my feet in it, balance myself and push the bucket into it to fill it."

Other workers at Vasai Creek said deaths go unreported, with hundreds of boats in the creek nightly, and they only find out when the body of a drowned diver floats to the surface a day or two after disappearing or they find it buried on the creek bed.

"There have been so many times when I have gone down for sand and touched a body," said Shiva Shahni, 35, a worker at a sand port in Bhiwandi, Thane, who migrated from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Shankar Meghwali's son Mahesh is one of the miners who died.

Outside the family's mud house in Mohokhurde village in Vikramgad - a little over 100 km from Mumbai - is a holy basil plant where Meghwali and his wife buried the ashes of their son who drowned in Vasai Creek five years ago.