Daijiworld Media Network - Moodbidri (SP)

Moodbidri, May 26: A tunnel passageway has been discovered at Kolathar Padavu. Kolathar Padavu is located at Niddodi within Kallamundkoor gram panchayat limits, which had been in the news for some time because of the proposal to set up a thermal power plant there. The tunnel is believed to have been created due to natural causes.

Kolathar Padavu has a level surface with laterite stones. There are many red bauxite quarries here. When one of these quarries was being dug, a small pit emerged. When it was further explored, a tunnel having three feet diameter through which one person can slide in with some difficulty came to view. When local farmers, Meloy Moras, Ashwathapura Srinivas Gowda, Joy D'Souza and Sathish Vantimar checked the tunnel by lowering a rope, they felt that there is a passageway.

After covering a distance of about 13 feet from the mouth of the tunnel, a five feet wide tunnel seemed to be heading towards the northeast direction. Some distance from there, big boulders blocked the tunnel path. It is likely that the tunnel would have continued further from there, said those who went in with the help of torches and mobile phone torches.

The tunnel would have been naturally created either because water would have got percolated down in the hilly terrain or because of the formation of a stream which would have been the result of several fountains merging and forming a forceful stream, elders in the area feel.

They expect the revenue, geology, and archaeology departments to come together, examine the tunnel and record its actual origin, size, shape etc and whether it was naturally created or man-made.