The police on Tuesday said they are investigating the death of a worker while cleaning a sewer manually in New Friends Colony in south-east Delhi.
Three persons – Panth Lal Chandra, 43, Ramkishan Chandra, 35, and Shiv Das, 25 – entered a manhole on the premises of Friends Club in New Friends Colony on Sunday evening and fell unconscious. Panth was declared dead at a hospital, Ramkishan is in critical condition, and Shiv is out of danger.
A day earlier, the Delhi Jal Board, the agency under whose jurisdiction the sewer falls, said the three are “not [its] regular or contractual staff”.
“This was an unauthorised access into a DJB sewer manhole, and there were no ongoing works regarding the cleaning of the sewer on Sunday,” it said in a statement.
A senior police officer said the workers wouldn’t have stepped into the manhole without the DJB’s nod. “The workers, unless ordered to clean the manhole manually, would not have gone there. So a letter [official statement] is not enough to claim that they were not employees of the DJB and it did not engage them. We are looking into all private and government entities involved in the matter,” said the officer.
The officer said it had also been found the victims were not wearing any protective gear or carrying the necessary equipment while cleaning the sewer.
The police have registered a case under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), along with Sections 7 (prohibition of employment) and 9 (appointment of inspectors to ensure compliance with the act) of the Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
Published – March 19, 2025 01:42 am IST