According to police, two sanitation workers died of asphyxiation while cleaning a sewage line in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad district on Sunday. They said the incident happened on Sunday evening in Dholka town. The two workers, identified as Gopal Padhar (24) and Bijal Padhar (32) died after becoming unconscious while cleaning a sewage line. They were rushed to a hospital, where doctors pronounced them dead, according to a Dholka police station official. According to the official, a FIR was filed at Dholka police station against contractors Ashiq Thakor and Jagdish Thakor under Indian Penal Code Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and relevant provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The Gujarat government recently informed the Legislative Assembly that 11 sanitation workers died asphyxiated while cleaning drains across the state over the last two years.
On Tuesday, a non-governmental organization (NGO) filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Gujarat High Court, requesting that steps be taken to prevent manhole worker deaths and that compensation be paid to the families of all those who died while cleaning drainage lines or septic tanks. According to the NGO Manav Garima, the government has not compensated the families of 26 of 152 manhole workers who died between 1993 and 2014, as well as 16 workers who died after the NGO filed its main petition in 2016.
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