A manual labourer lost his life while cleaning a sewer pipeline at Sassoon Docks in Mumbai on 31 October. Ahmed Ansari was cleaning the sewer pipeline in Mumbai's Port Trust area when he fell unconscious.
DCP Manoj Kumar Sharma told The Indian Express:
According to the report, residents alleged that Ahmed's death was a result of negligence on the part of the contractor. Shiv Sena co-ordinator Krishna Pavle told the daily:
An FIR has been registered against the contractor under Section 304 (A) of the Indian Penal Code, for causing death by negligence.
Employment of persons for manual scavenging is prohibited in India under The Prohibition Of Employment As Manual Scavengers And Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
A 2014 Supreme Court order extended this to include sewer workers under this law. The order came, following a petition filed by Bezwada Wilson and his organisation, Safai Karamchari Andolan, which works to eradicate manual scavenging.
Wilson said that despite the law, the reality is vastly different. The Magsaysay award winner adds that at least 1,370 manual scavenging deaths have occurred since 1993. Only 80 of the families of these workers have received compensation so far, reports The Wire.
However, what Union Minister for Social Justice, Thawar Chand Gehlot said to The Hindustan Times in this report, indicates that the problem may run much deeper:
Ahmed Ansari is just one of thousands who work as manual scavengers, a line of work that has been explicitly prohibited under the law, but continues to exist. Despite the number of manual scavenging deaths, The National Crime Records Bureau stated, in 2015, that there had been no deaths linked to manual scavenging that year. told
Bezwada Wilson told The Quint in 2016:
(With inputs from The Indian Express and The Wire)
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