One of the most challenging safety problems in room and pillar coal mines is  roof fall phenomena during retreat mining. Roof fall not only causes  fatal  and non-fatal injuries on miners,  stoppages in mining operations and    equipment breakdowns, but also results in inefficient recovery of ore reserves. As a result, development of a methodology for risk assessment of roof fall has a remarkable role on safety of retreat mining. In this paper, at first all effective parameters on roof fall during retreat mining are identified and then the role of each parameter on roof fall occurrence is explained.  Afterwards, a practical methodology is developed for assessment and control of roof fall risk using semi-quantitative techniques. Finally, this methodology  is applied in main panel of Bagdeva Underground Coal  Mine, located in the  South-eastern of India at Korba, and various possible scenarios of  retreat  mining and corresponding risks are evaluated.