Manual scavenging: 4 dead in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: The abhorrent practice of manual scavenging reared its ugly head after two labourers were choked to death while cleaning a 15-foot-deep clogged manhole on Kasbagh Road in Srinagar in Doddaballapura Town on Sunday noon. Two local residents who rushed to the rescue of two labourers also suffocated to death.

Tension prevailed in the area after the incident as grieving family members, relatives and others questioned the negligence of authorities. The incident has raised questions against the municipal council of Doddaballapura, which sanctioned and outsourced the cleaning work.

The police identified the scavengers as Jagannath alias Jagan, 28, hailing from Andhra Pradesh, and Muniswamy Goundar, 34, who was from Tamil Nadu. The two local residents were identified as Madhu, 21 and Muniraju, 23.

The work to clean the manhole along the Bengaluru-Doddaballapura Highway was sanctioned by the municipal council to Rao Constructions, a Hyderabad-based company, which had subcontracted it. The two dead contract labourers were from the subcontracting firm.

The incident occurred around 2 pm on Sunday. Jagan and Goundar, who were checking manholes across the city, found a clogged one at Srinagar. Jagan stepped in and soon started struggling for breath. Goundar jumped in to pull him out, but he too started suffocating.

When the two started screaming for help, Muniraju, who worked in a factory, and Madhu who were passing by rushed to their help. While they were trying to pull out the labourers, they reportedly lost balance and fell into the manhole. All the four suffocated to death, the police said.

The officials rushed to the spot and deployed an excavator to pull the bodies out. The entire operation took lasted more than two hours. “They bodies were then shifted to a government hospital for autopsy. We have sought information from the company that the labourers were working for, and it is yet to reach us,” a police official said.

Prima facie, the deaths appear due to inhalation of toxic gases inside the manhole. “We have booked a case under Section 304A for causing death due to negligence and also under sections of an anti-scavenging act passed recently. The cases will be registered against the companies involved,” the police said.