Manual scavenging, as per legal definition in India, refers to the practice of ‘manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or otherwise handing in any manner human excreta’ in context of insanitary or dry latrines. Even today in many parts of rural India, Dalit women with bare hands, brooms, or metal scrapers’ collect, place in baskets or buckets and carry human waste to dispose it off to the dumping site. The practice exists in South Asian countries South Asian countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka where caste exists. However, another form of manual scavenging is hazardous cleaning of sewers, and septic tanks in urban geographies. The phrase ‘hazardous cleaning’ in the 2013 Act refers to this manual cleaning of sewers under the jurisdiction of urban local bodies and septic tanks found in private households and commercial enterprises. This also includes ‘hazardous cleaning’ of storm water drains, as per expansive interpretation by Madras High Court in 2017. The term ‘hazardous’ is employed by the drafters as the sewerage infrastructure contains huge amounts of life-threatening toxic gases like methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulphide, amongst others. In an incident on May 2, 2026 in Faridabad, two workers from Kheri Kalan village engaged in sewer cleaning were found dead inside a 15–20 feet sewer after they were asked by the contractor to clean it after they had punched out from work. In spite of provisioning of a suction and jetting machine, they were asked to enter inside the sewer in a routine manner to clean the faecal sludge at bottom after having deployed the machine for suction of sewage water. They worked for sanitation management in PBTP estate who outsourced the work to PBMS company which was supplied labour by contracting agency Team Liege. The use of the term ‘hazardous manual scavenging' reflects the understanding that such ‘work’ is not only life-threatening but also dehumanizing and deeply violates the right to life with human dignity of the workers engaged in such practice.
On March 30, 2026, 32-year-old Rahul from Valmiki community lost his life during hazardous manual scavenging of a 10 feet deep storm drain in Tahirpur under jurisdiction of Public Works Department (PWD) in East Delhi’s Dilshad Garden. He was engaged contractually to manually clean the drain without any provisioning ‘cleaning devices’ or ‘safety equipment’ as per Section 2(1)(d) of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. Though the drain came under jurisdiction of the PWD which is the principle employer, the private arrangement for manual cleaning of the drain was done through contractual engagement of two informal sanitation workers in exchange for a wage of Rs 350 promised by the intermediate employer, contractor Ajit, who was answerable to PWD supervisor Anwar Ahmed. As per statement of two eyewitnesses at the site of incident, the cleaning work was being carried out in an unsafe inhumane way without any suction and jetting machines, oversight mechanism, or protective gears. Rahul who was inside the drain filled up buckets of filth and handed it over to his co-worker Captain who dumped it outside the drain. Rahul’s body was found and retrieved two hours later by the rescue authorities. The family alleges that Rahul lost his life due to exposure to massive amounts of toxic gases in the drain. They blame the PWD and contractor for such blatant negligence, questioning why such outlawed hazardous cleaning was being performed manually by turning Dalits into dispensable bodies. So the reason for there being 'hazardous' is that there is presence of toxic gases inside sewers and septic tanks and even the Prohibition of Manual Scavenging and Rehabilitation Act, 2013 uses the term 'hazardous cleaning' for cleaning without cleaning services (machines) and safety equipments and protocols, under Section 2(1)(d). However, it is not only life threatening but also dehumanising and deeply violative of human dignity of workers who are asked to go inside by employers.
An FIR 186/2026 was filed at PS Seemapuri for the offence of ‘Causing death by negligence’ under Section 106(1) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. However, relevant offences under Section 7 and Section 9 of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (PEMSR, 2023) and Section 3(1)(j) of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 were omitted initially, later added through a general diary entry after pressure groups’ protests against widespread persistence of such acts of undignified and hazardous cleaning of sewers (includes storm drains as per Madras High Court judgment in Safai Karamchari Andolan case, 2017) and septic tanks. In the statement of the complainant and witness in the FIR, co-worker Captain mentions that he was assigned the work to clean the drain (nala) at Q-Pocket, Dilshad Garden. Anwar instructed that a boy named Rahul was sent to the site by Contractor Ajit. Captain told Contractor Ajit that the drain is very deep and requested him to provide safety equipment but he gave them nothing except one panji (a long-handled iron rake/scraper) to pull out the waste. Both of them began extracting waste from the drain. Around 2:00 PM, Rahul’s foot slipped, and he fell into the drain. Captain tried hard to save him but could not. He shouted for help, a crowd gathered, and someone called the police. He mentioned Contractor Ajit pays him ₹350 per day, and they were not provided with any safety equipment because of which his companion Rahul drowned in the drain and died. Furthermore, he concluded that Rahul’s death was caused by the negligence of Contractor and his supervisor and that legal action should be taken against them.
As per the family, the contractor visited the victim’s family looking for his elder brother at 5 PM regarding some work but chose not to inform the family of the incident. The victim’s family was not even duly informed about the incident by any law enforcement official but by an unknown person late in the evening. In protest, the victim’s family did not cremate his body against the gross indifference by the contractor who is absconding and PWD officials responsible. The family’s agitation was joined by the Seemapuri’s MLA Veer Singh Dhingan and Municipal Councillor Mohini Jinwal on 31 March, 2026. Seeing such uproar and anguish in the victim’s community, the administration instead of acknowledging the distressed and enraged members of the community responded by heavy deployment of heavy deployment of Rapid Action Force personnel in Sunder Nagri’s MCD Flats where the victim lived to prevent ‘law and order’, as per the police personnels.
In Sunder Nagri, MCD Flat where Rahul lived, the room rent is between 4000-5000 monthly; there is no space in their one-room accommodation except for a cot. The relatives and neighbours gathered in the chaupal in front of the house were in grief and deeply concerned about the well-being of the mother of the victim. She is so distraught since the news of the incident that she is wailing inconsolably, calling out her son’s name everywhere, looking for him. She is also dependent financially on him; his father passed away long back, and he was the unmarried son taking care of his mother. An elderly woman part of the gathering in deep anguish told Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch’s fact-finding team, “we are poor and believers of Guru Valmiki, this is why we face such brutal conditions, we do not get any work easily”. She said, “at times, we don’t have money to even feed or educate our kids, we are forced to hide our caste status to make ends meet”. She narrated how their women working in savarna households as helps, they are forced to lie about their caste as they won’t even let them enter their house. Recalling how they routinely face dehumanizing casteist slurs and retorts not to come too close. She expressed her rage adding, ‘aur yeh kaam karte hue hamara balak chal gaya, thekedar ko kya matlab hamare bacche se, thekedari band honi chahiye safai ke kaam me, thekedari aur yeh ganda kaam hamare logo ko maar rahi hai’.
The women of the neighbourhood were deeply aware of the pervasive institutions of caste and class that pushes them to the receiving end of such material deprivation and societal discrimination. The women gathered were not only in grief over the incident and its treatment by law enforcement but were enraged and acutely critical of the role of contractualization in sanitation work that is killing their men. Expressing that such incidents of sewer deaths are preventable and not being effectively dealt with due to corruption and contractualization in urban local bodies, they challenged the enduring nature of the pernicious practice of contractualization in urban local bodies such as PWD, MCD and DJB, etc that exploit their labour without any institutional safeguards. They recalled how when some of the Dalit women workers in Sunder Nagari working in public toilets and as sweepers in MCD resisted the practice of not being on official payroll by complaining against the contractor who siphoned off 45 % of their minimum wage, they were threatened and told they not show up the next day if they wish so. Though exhausted from grief over the personal loss coupled with the insensitivity of law enforcement in the aftermath, they were loud and clear in holding accountable not just the persons (the contractor and PWD officials) behind the criminal act that took Rahul’s life but also the corrupt nexus of caste, contractualization, and informalization in urban local bodies and sanitation authorities plaguing urban sanitation governance.
Empirical research also exposes rampant informalization and sub-contractualization in urban local bodies – responsible for sanitation whether pertaining to solid waste – like municipal corporations where institutional safeguards are denied to workers as members of self-privileged castes benefit from being on the muster roll or official payroll while the actual burden of sanitation falls upon members of Scheduled Castes (SC) group informally arranged. Even in bodies primarily dealing with sewage like Jal Boards, or para-statal bodies like Development Authority, Public Works Department, etc., the actual sanitation labour is being actually carried out often by certain SC sub-castes intergenerationally engaged in sanitation or migrant workers from marginalized communities, as ordained by the graded caste hierarchy. The phenomenon of informalization coupled with contractualization allows for engagement of workers outside of formal labour laws and regulations with rising precarity resulting in not only insecurity, lack of protection of labour laws and institutional safeguards but also a convenient mechanism to bypass the abolitionist framework required to eradicate the social practice of manual hazardous cleaning of sewage in urban local bodies. This coupling of caste with contractualization further entrenches caste-based sanitation work. It provides an unchecked breeding ground for perpetuation of what Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche describe as ‘conjugated oppression’ – inseparability of caste-class relations having grave implications not only on labour law protections and social security but on the very right to life with dignity of workers from inter-generationally discriminated communities as well as exploitation of cheap surplus labour of marginalized migrant workers suffering from the economic desperation of the transition phase.
“The authorities responsible for annihilating the practice appear, case after case, systemically complicit in the enslavement of workers evading their own accountability through processes of contractualisation and informalization, thereby, sustaining their exploitation.”
Bezwada Wilson’s Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) reports 41 sanitation workers have lost their lives in sewers and septic tanks within the first 80 days of 2026. According to a Lok Sabha report released in March 2026, the official government data recorded 622 deaths from 2017 to March 2026. Activists contradict these figures documenting how the government’s data underreports such deaths given that SKA recorded 121 deaths in 2025 alone whereas the government reported 46.
It is the failure of the state and society that such practice continues despite the prohibition. The prohibition itself is a truncated abolitionist move against the practice in PEMSR Act 2013, a statute described as ‘compromised from inception’ by Shumona Khanna, the lawyer in Safai Karamchari Andolan case. Asang Wankhede also argues how in practice the prohibition of hazardous cleaning in effect becomes contingent on the provisioning of mere safety equipment, thereby, making it a ‘conditional prohibition’. The authorities responsible for annihilating the practice appear, case after case, systemically complicit in the enslavement of workers evading their own accountability through processes of contractualisation and informalization, thereby, sustaining their exploitation. Workers’ rights are abused by exploiting their vulnerable socio-economic location through undignified and life-threatening hazardous cleaning, despite measures towards mechanization. Mechanisation itself suffers from inadequacy and politics of patronisation. In 2019, Kejriwal, then Chief Minister of Delhi blamed sewer deaths on ‘carelessness’ of workers and announced allotment of sewer cleaning machines to workers engaged inter-generationally in such work. This kind of paternalism is again witnessed in the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) policy framework that attempts to create ‘sewer entry professionals’ and turn inter-generationally marginalized caste workers into contractors through its ‘sanipreneur’ initiative.
Such paternalism in policy is compounded by law enforcement’s caste contempt in the form of indifference or hateful approach where sensitivity is required. In one of the cases where two workers died in septic tanks near the capital, the District Magistrate who is designated as the nodal agency under the PEMSR Act, 2013 was herself unaware of the legislation and the 2023 mandate of compensation of 30 lakhs to the family of victim by the Supreme Court. Similarly, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, a high-ranking official, often from Indian Police Service-cadre heading a district (commissionerate) in Delhi, remarked when two workers died and one was injured while cleaning a sewer at a NBCC construction site that the workers must have entered on their own ‘looking for the fragrance’. In one case in Noida, a police official called the death of two workers while cleaning septic tank of a household ‘ittefaqiya’ or co-incidental on his own volition, even though it is a cognizable offence. In yet another case, the investigating officer cursed the brother of the victim as to ‘why the worker (insert curse word) entered the interceptor chamber (Delhi Jal Board) alone’ when it was clear that rules regarding supervision, provisioning of cleaning devices and safety equipment were openly flouted.
Though it appears that it is the insensitivity and corruption of law enforcement that impedes the deterrence due to improper investigation including FIRs against unknown persons or delayed arrests such that the contractors go absconding, and due to weakened evidence resulting in negligible conviction in such cases, however, the practice which is entirely preventable is allowed to perpetuate facilitated by an entire apparatus of social institutions that instead of working together to annihilate, appear to be working together as ground militias preventing any possibilities for an absolute abolition. Needless to say, there was immense pressure on the family to cremate Rahul’s body without further delay as the neighbourhood in MCD flats, Sunder Nagri teemed with Rapid Action Force personnels. As a response to agitation from the community and decision to not cremate the victim’ body, visits from the senior police officials finally acknowledged the family’s loss, the criminality in Rahul’s death, assuring arrests and compensation as per Supreme Courts’ mandate. They complied and performed the cremation rites, however, the family and pressure groups till this date await news of arrests hoping for some semblance of justice. Meanwhile, the erasure of human and social rights of Dalit sanitation workers are systemically exploited through forces of contractualization, caste contempt and dilution of criminality and accountability.