A 55-year-old man died while cleaning a manhole in Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur district on Thursday, according to police, two days after a similar death in state capital Chennai.
Kumbakonam Police said the man was identified as Sadhik Batsha, a resident of Melakkaveri in the district. Batsha, who was cleaning a manhole near Kumbakonam railway station, had tumbled into the hole after fainting because of noxious gases, officials said.
“As the sewer was overflowing from a hole just opposite to Kumbakonam railway station, a private firm had deployed four men to clean the manhole,” said an inquiry officer with Kumbakonam police station.
“Batsha was the first one to enter the hole. As the poisonous gases suffocated Batsha, he slipped further into the manhole” the official said.
The firefighters searched for Batsha for two hours before retrieving his body.
A recent report by the central government has said Tamil Nadu has recorded the highest number of deaths at 144 due to manual scavenging since 1993.
The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) pointed out that the Supreme Court and Centre have urged state governments not to deploy men for cleaning sewers.
“The rule has not been followed in a proper way. Merely two days after a youth died due to asphyxiation while cleaning a sewage tank in Chennai Express Avenue mall, another one died in Kumbakonam now,” the Dalit party’s district secretary, Tamil Aruvi, said.
Tamil Aruvi said the body of Batsha was fished out only after two hours after he went inside.
Batsha’s family and activists are demanding that the police must book the contractor who deployed him for cleaning the manhole.
They said police in Chennai had booked the contractor under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013 for deploying men for manual scavenging and causing the death of the 25-year-old Arun Kumar by negligence.
Police have sent Batsha’s body to Kumbakonam Government Hospital (GH) for an autopsy. They have also launched a probe to identify the contractor, the inquiry officer added.
