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Five men die from toxic fumes while cleaning septic tank at luxury Delhi apartment block

Government demands urgent inquiry in country where fate of sewer and latrine workers is politically charged

Adam Withnall
Delhi
Tuesday 11 September 2018 08:59 BST
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The deaths have prompted public outrage
The deaths have prompted public outrage

Five men have died after they were ordered to clean a septic tank in an upmarket housing complex in Delhi without any safety equipment or training.

Police say the men succumbed to toxic fumes after climbing down into raw sewage in the 30ft-deep tank, located in the basement of a high-rise residential tower in Moti Nagar, a suburb of west Delhi.

New Delhi deputy police commissioner Monika Bhardwaj said the men were sent into the tank by a contractor at 3pm on Sunday. Two men - named Sarfaraz and Pankaj - went in first, using only cloths to cover their faces from the smell.

After some time, another two men were sent in to check on them - identified in the Times of India as Raja and Umesh. When none emerged, a fifth man - Vishal - was told to go and check. It was only when he started screaming for help that fire officers and police were called.

Four of the men were declared dead on arrival at the nearby hospital while the fifth, Vishal, was pulled alive from the tank but died in hospital on Monday.

The deaths have prompted public outrage, and India’s central government has ordered an urgent probe. Gopal Rai, the labour minister, asked for the results of the inquiry to be presented within three days, his spokesperson said.

Vishal’s sister told the Indian Express he was alive when he arrived at hospital, and described to doctors his feeling of “suffocating” inside the septic tank.

He had been employed as a cleaner with a private company earning Rs 12,000 (£130) a month, she said. “But his work was not to go inside the tank. I don’t know how this happened. Somebody must have forced him to go inside.”

Witnesses were quoted as saying the contractor ordering the work had fled the scene before police arrived. In a statement, the complex’s developer DLF said maintenance services were provided by a separate company, JLL. JLL has yet to comment publicly on the deaths.

Cases involving latrine and sewer workers are especially politically charged in India, because traditionally members of lower castes were forced to carry out such tasks that were considered unacceptable to other castes.

In 2013, a law was issued which banned employing people to clean human solid waste by hand - work that was described in the law as “dehumanising” and based on a “highly iniquitous caste system”.

Delhi is among the worst continued offenders in a country where, experts estimate, some 40 people a month die while cleaning out sewers and septic tanks by hand.

Bezwada Wilson, from the Sanitation Workers Movement, said 1,800 had died since a Supreme Court ruling in 2014 condemned the lack of enforcement of the law protecting workers.

"Those in power are not taking these events seriously," Wilson told the Associated Press.

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