Bengaluru police booked 5 individuals after two staff employed to scrub a sewage remedy plant (STP) at an condo in Konankunte have been discovered lifeless below mysterious circumstances on Saturday night, officers mentioned on Monday.
Police mentioned the deceased have been recognized as Ravi Kumar (29), from Gollarahatti village of Koratagere taluk in Tumakuru district, and Dilip Kumar Jana (25), a local of Odisha.
The 2 have been Bio Centra India staff. They have been engaged on a sewage water remedy plant on the Status Falcon Metropolis Condominium on Kanakapura Street in Anjanadri Structure when the accident occurred round 7 pm, police mentioned.
They have been discovered unconscious, and the police weren’t knowledgeable in regards to the incident till 10 pm. In a criticism, Kumar’s spouse Sashikala mentioned she obtained to learn about her husband’s dying round 9 pm, from Ramesh, a supervisor at Bio Centra.
Following her criticism, the Konankunte police registered a case of dying by negligence below Part 304A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) towards 5 individuals – Mukthiyar Ahmed, proprietor of the agency the place the 2 victims labored, Prabhu, electrical in-charge, Ramesh, the sector officer, administration of the condo complicated and the proprietor of the condo.
“The FIR has been registered, and all of the procedures have been executed. Now, we’re ready for the postmortem studies. The deceased have been septic tank operators, and so they have been discovered lifeless close to the remedy plant. It isn’t handbook scavenging. They’re septic tank operators. We’re but to establish the trigger behind the deaths, whether or not it was because of electrocution or because of leakage of any gasoline,” the Konankunte police mentioned.
Additional investigation is underway, the officers mentioned. The our bodies have been shifted to the KIMS Hospital for postmortem, after which the police launched them to the households.
Regardless of the Prohibition of Employment as Handbook Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (MS Act, 2013), which prohibits the observe of handbook scavenging, it’s prevalent throughout the nation.
As per part 2(1)(g) of the Act, “Handbook scavenger means an individual engaged or employed for handbook cleansing, carrying, disposing of, or in any other case dealing with in any method, human excreta…”
In line with the Nationwide Fee for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), a physique below the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, 1,054 individuals have died until December 31, 2022, because of hazardous cleansing of sewer and septic tanks. The best variety of such deaths have been reported from Tamil Nadu, the place 231 individuals have died, whereas Karnataka accounts for 86 deaths.
In the meantime, in August final 12 months, the Centre mentioned within the Lok Sabha that 330 individuals have died because of “hazardous cleansing of sewer and septic tanks” from 2017-2022. It has, nevertheless, maintained that there have been no deaths because of ‘handbook scavenging’ within the nation.
Uttar Pradesh, with 47 instances, has topped the listing of deaths because of “hazardous cleansing of sewer and septic tanks,” adopted by Tamil Nadu (43), Delhi (42), Haryana (36), Gujarat (28) and Karnataka (26).
In the meantime, advocate Maitreyi Krishnan, who had taken the difficulty of handbook scavenging to the Karnataka excessive court docket up to now, mentioned, “Solely when individuals die, such incidents come to the forefront. However day in and time out, individuals are performing this work. The federal government is meant to do the identification and rehabilitation of such staff, and that has not been executed.”
“The incident occurred in an enormous condo complicated which has state-of-the-art services. To convey a few change, individuals ought to know that handbook scavenging is illegitimate. Secondly, we should always have a look at the vulnerability that pushes individuals to do that work. No one does this out of selection. Thirdly, even after the second legislation, identification and rehabilitation nonetheless haven’t taken place. Then there may be the central authorities making statements that there aren’t any deaths because of this,” Krishnan added.
The incident additionally comes towards the backdrop of Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman making an announcement on the sewage system whereas presenting the Union Finances 2023-2024.
With practically ₹100 crore allocation for the newly christened NAMASTE (Nationwide Motion Plan for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem) scheme, Sitharaman mentioned that the Union authorities is seeking to allow 100% mechanical desludging of septic tanks and sewers in all cities and cities. “All cities and cities might be enabled for 100 per cent transition of sewers and septic tanks from manhole to machine gap mode,” she mentioned.