MUMBAI: A day after the death of a sanitation worker, the Vakola police arrested a private contractor, Vilas Jadhav, for hiring two workers to clean a private colony’s sewer line and opening a BMC manhole for this. The workers fell into the manhole and while one died, the other worker sustained injuries.
The police were already present and the fire brigade had pulled out the men. When the police questioned Vilas Jadhav, who was present at the site, he stated that he was a retired BMC employee and undertook small drainage cleaning contracts. When the police asked Jadhav if he possessed any authorisation to open the BMC chamber, he admitted that he had no such permission or the necessary safety equipment for drainage work. When Vethan informed his superiors about the matter, they instructed him to file a complaint against the individual who had opened the chamber cover and protective grate without authorisation. Singh, who is now a police officer, then appealed to the judge that the collector of the city should also be held liable and pay compensation. After a two-year wait, the state government’s social justice department ordered compensation for the widows of the three workers. In order to make sure there is no manual manhole scavenging in Mumbai, the state government has set up the Dakshata and Sarvekshan committees headed by the collector and has at least nine members from the BMC, police and NGOs, with the assistant commissioner of social justice department as secretary.
After the Vakola police received a call about the accident at 11 am on Monday, sewerage inspection officer Abhijit Vethan and other BMC officials rushed to the scene. Based on his complaint, the police booked Jadhav under Sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 125 (rash and dangerous act to endanger the life of others) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. However when former advocate Isha Singh mentioned this figure to the judge in a PIL seeking compensation for three women who had lost their sanitation worker husbands in December 2019, the government claimed there were zero scavengers in the state.
