For more than three decades, India has had laws prohibiting manual scavenging. For nearly three years, it has had a central scheme promising the complete mechanisation of sanitation work. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that no human being should be made to enter a sewer or septic tank, enhanced compensation for sewer deaths, and even directed a complete ban on manual sewer cleaning in six metropolitan cities. Yet sanitation workers continue to die inside toxic pits.
On August 4, hundreds of safai karmacharis (sanitation workers), families of those who died cleaning sewers and septic tanks, Members of Parliament, students, writers and civil society groups assembled at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi under the banner of the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA). Their demand was strikingly simple: that Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly acknowledge the government’s failure to stop these deaths, apologise to the country, and end what they described as a continuing cycle of preventable killings.
The demonstration, organised under the slogan #STOPKILLINGUS, was not merely another protest against unsafe labour conditions. It was an indictment of a system that activists argue has normalised caste-based hazardous labour while simultaneously understating its human cost. As reported by Newsreel Asia, Protesters carried placards reading “Stop Killing Us! Stop Hiding Our Deaths!” and “PM Break Your Silence!” while submitting a memorandum accusing the Union government of concealing the true scale of sewer and septic tank deaths.
The missing dead
At the centre of the protest lies a stark dispute over numbers. According to documentation compiled by the Safai Karmachari Andolan, 593 people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks between January 2021 and July 2026. However, the Union government’s response in Parliament acknowledged only 332 deaths during roughly the same period. That leaves 261 deaths unaccounted for, according to SKA.
The memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister posed a direct question:
“How did 593 deaths become 332? Where have you hidden the remaining 261 persons who were killed?”
According to the organisation’s records:
- 2021: 47 deaths
- 2022: 93 deaths
- 2023: 102 deaths
- 2024: 117 deaths
- 2025: 121 deaths
- January–July 2026: 113 deaths, including 15 in July alone
The trend demonstrates not improvement but escalation. SKA National Convenor Bezwada Wilson said that despite more than four decades of campaigning against manual scavenging, sanitation workers continue to be sent into sewers and septic tanks in violation of law, reported Newsreel Asia.
“If the government does not immediately stop these killings,” he warned, “the community will have no option but to organise a nationwide chakka jam.”
Not accidents, but illegal deaths
The language used by the movement is deliberate. The memorandum repeatedly rejects the official description of these incidents as workplace accidents. “These deaths are not accidents. They are caused by illegally employing and forcing workers to get inside septic tanks and underground sewer drains.”
The organisation argues that every such death violates Articles 14, 17 and 21 of the Constitution—equality before law, abolition of untouchability and the right to life. SKA National Leader Deepthi Sukumar argued that the persistence of these deaths reflects not only administrative negligence but the continuing reality of caste discrimination. “Because those dying are Dalits, the government does not seem to care,” she said, reported The Hindustan Gazette.
Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha described the deaths as “a matter of national shame“, while CPI(ML) MP Sudhama Prasad criticised the Modi government’s “Manuvadi mindset,” accused the government of attempting to hide fatalities instead of preventing them, reported The Hindustan Gazette. Congress MP Karamveer Baudh assured protesters that the issue would be raised in Parliament.
The human cost behind the statistics
Behind every disputed statistic is a family still waiting for accountability. Forty-two-year-old Satyawati travelled to Jantar Mantar carrying memories dating back to March 20, 2009. Her brother-in-law, Ashok Kumar, worked for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi collecting garbage. “He left home for work but never returned,” she recalled, reported Hindustan Times.
According to Satyawati, the family later received a phone call informing them that Ashok had been sent to clean a septic tank in Delhi’s Narela and died inside it. Seventeen years later, she says, nothing has changed. Her family’s story mirrors hundreds of others represented at the protest—families for whom compensation has often remained inadequate, prosecutions rare, and justice elusive.
The report by Hindustan Times also shared the story of another participant, Paleram, a 60-year-old daily wage worker from Rohini who migrated from Haryana, described entering septic tanks for nearly twenty-five years with almost no training or protective equipment. He began as a sweeper earning ₹50 a day before switching to septic tank cleaning because it paid marginally more.
“The only training I received was being told to climb down the slippery iron handles and clean,” he said, reported Hindustan Times. After recently fracturing his leg while slipping inside a septic tank, he continues working because there are few alternatives. “Sometimes NGOs give us gloves. Otherwise we go inside wearing almost nothing.”
These accounts expose the gap between official claims of mechanisation and the everyday realities faced by sanitation workers.
The caste system beneath the sewer
The protest repeatedly foregrounded what scholars and activists have argued for decades: manual scavenging is not merely an occupational hazard but a caste-based institution. A doctoral researcher studying caste and occupation at Ambedkar University observed that while governments celebrate cleanliness campaigns, the workers responsible for maintaining sanitation infrastructure remain among the least protected.
CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat, who joined the demonstration, remarked that sanitation workers remain invisible both in life and in death. “They are invisible when they are alive, and when they die, the government behaves as though they never existed,” reported Hindustan Times.
Manoj Kumar Jha similarly argued that the overwhelming concentration of Dalits in sanitation work reflects centuries of structural exclusion rather than individual occupational choice.
NAMASTE and the mechanisation gap
India has formally attempted to abolish manual scavenging for decades. The first national legislation prohibiting manual scavenging came in 1993. It was replaced by the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, which criminalised the employment of manual scavengers, prohibited hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without adequate safeguards, and promised rehabilitation. Yet enforcement has remained weak.
No meaningful record of widespread prosecutions exists under the earlier legislation. The 2013 law itself has been criticised for leaving significant ambiguities, including failing to clearly define what constitutes adequate protective equipment and allowing hazardous sewer work under certain conditions. Government data has also remained contested.
The 2011 Census recorded more than 2.6 million dry latrines, while the Socio-Economic Caste Census identified over 180,000 households dependent on manual scavenging as a livelihood. The Safai Karmachari Andolan has consistently argued that the real number of manual scavengers exceeds one million. They have also repeatedly identified the Indian Railways as one of the country’s largest employers of sanitation workers engaged in manual cleaning through contractual arrangements.
Detailed report on how employement of sanitary workers in Indian Railway tracks is a problem may be read here.
In July 2023, the Union government launched the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE), promising to eliminate hazardous manual sewer cleaning through mechanisation. According to government announcements, the programme was allocated ₹349.73 crore. Three years later, SKA argues that sanitation work remains overwhelmingly dependent on human entry into septic tanks and sewers. The organisation therefore describes the scheme as having failed to achieve its primary objective. Its memorandum asks the government to officially acknowledge this failure and fundamentally redesign the programme.
The Supreme Court’s growing frustration
On July 27, the Supreme Court sharply criticised state governments for failing to prevent sewer deaths despite repeated judicial directions. Hearing the long-pending public interest litigation filed by Dr Balram concerning manual scavenging and sewer cleaning, a Bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul M. Pancholi expressed serious concern over continuing fatalities.
Senior Advocate K. Parameshwar, appearing as amicus curiae, informed the Court that deaths had continued despite its landmark 2023 judgment and subsequent monitoring orders. Referring to data placed before Parliament, he submitted that 54 sewer deaths were officially recorded in 2024 and 46 deaths in 2025, with Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh among the affected states.
Detailed reports on the judgments may be read here, here and here.
The Court responded by issuing show-cause notices to the Chief Secretaries of five states, asking why contempt proceedings should not be initiated for failing to comply with its earlier directions.
As reported by LiveLaw, Justice Aravind Kumar made the Court’s frustration unmistakably clear: “If deaths have occurred subsequent to our orders, we are going to summon your Chief Secretaries… We are making it very clear that we are going to initiate suo motu contempt… This can’t go on… We will fix the responsibility. Somewhere it has to stop.”
The Bench noted that despite repeated directions issued since October 2023, including enhanced compensation of ₹30 lakh for sewer deaths and the January 2025 ban on manual sewer cleaning in six metropolitan cities, fatalities continued “in larger numbers”, indicating that the Court’s orders had failed to translate into administrative action.
A detailed look into the jurisprudence governing manual scavenging, researched consistently by Citizens for Justice and Peace, can be accessed here.
A demand for political accountability
The memorandum submitted by SKA asks for more than compensation. It demands:
- A national apology from the Prime Minister.
- Disclosure of the actual number of sewer and septic tank deaths.
- Immediate elimination of manual entry into sewers.
- A Parliamentary Standing Committee to investigate continuing fatalities.
- A time-bound national plan to eliminate sewer and septic tank deaths.
The memorandum also notes that similar representations were submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office in March 2025 and March 2026, yet received no response.
The memorandum to the PM is attached below:
An old practice the law still has not ended
The protest at Jantar Mantar exposed more than the continuing existence of manual scavenging. It highlighted the widening gap between constitutional guarantees, legislative promises, judicial directives and everyday governance.
Every sewer death occurring after the 2013 Act, after the launch of the NAMASTE Scheme, and after repeated Supreme Court orders raises difficult questions about implementation rather than legislative intent. When governments continue to describe these fatalities as isolated workplace accidents while workers are illegally sent into toxic pits without adequate protection, accountability shifts from individual contractors to the institutions responsible for regulation and enforcement.
For families like Satyawati’s, whose wait for justice has stretched across seventeen years, the demand is no longer simply for compensation. It is for official acknowledgement that these deaths are neither inevitable nor accidental, but the foreseeable consequence of a system that continues to rely on caste-based labour despite laws enacted to abolish it. Until that acknowledgement is matched by enforcement, mechanisation and prosecution, every new sewer death will remain not only a labour rights failure but also a constitutional one.
Related:
Supreme Court bans manual scavenging in metro cities
Breaking the cruel cycle of oppression: one more judgment against manual scavenging in India
Manual Scavenging: Why the gov’t’s conscience is not clean about the Swachh Bharat Mission
Manual scavenger deaths: How effective is the law in preventing them?
Everyday Atrocity: Mapping the normalisation of violence against Dalits and Adivasis in 2025