‘Have to fight for our right’: Families of Delhi sewer workers wait for compensation after deaths

“Nothing can bring my son back. Compensation or not, this work is hazardous and no one should be put through this hazardous occupation,” said Kiran, whose son Chand died on June 26 after entering a septic tank at a factory in Delhi’s Mundka.

Chand was not alone. Sandeep and Arun also died while cleaning the septic tank that day.

The three families eventually received the Rs 30 lakh they were each owed in August, nearly two months after the deaths. But Kiran said getting the money was anything but simple. The families made repeated rounds of local government offices and had to lean on officials before the payout was cleared.

“After their deaths, we had to struggle to get compensation for our families. It is our right and will help us get back on our feet. I have two other sons who have families and this money will help us. However, we had to press the authorities several times to get the compensation,” she told Newslaundry.

The delay Kiran describes is far from unique. Across Delhi, the families of workers who die cleaning sewers and septic tanks routinely wait months – and sometimes years – for money that is legally theirs. The government has laws and schemes meant to end such deaths and to support the bereaved, but activists say it is the grieving families who are left to navigate a slow bureaucracy.

In its landmark October 2023 judgment in Dr Balram Singh v Union of India, the Supreme Court raised the compensation for deaths caused by manual scavenging and hazardous sewer cleaning to Rs 30 lakh, up from the earlier norm of Rs 10 lakh. The sum is to be paid by the responsible government agency and, in Delhi, is routed to families through the district administration – the offices of District Magistrates and Sub-Divisional Magistrates. The court has stressed that the money should reach families quickly; in March 2025, hearing a clutch of sewer-death cases from Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, it ordered the four metropolitan authorities to release the full Rs 30 lakh – the compensation payable under the 2013 Act – to the next of kin of workers who had died in the preceding three months, within four weeks. Yet families continue to face delays.

Manual scavenging has been illegal in India since the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. Even so, sanitation workers are still pushed into dangerous cleaning jobs, sent down into sewers and septic tanks without the protective gear the law requires, often on informal, exploitative contracts. The Act prohibits “hazardous cleaning”, but it stops short of banning the manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks outright, provided workers are given safety equipment. However, the Supreme Court had last year banned manual scavenging and sewer cleaning in six metropolitan cities, including Delhi.

Official agencies try to keep distance from the deaths, taking the position that because sewer cleaning is outsourced to private entities, they carry no direct liability.

‘He just said he was going to see the work’

Kiran said cleaning septic tanks was not Chand’s regular occupation. He ran a food trolley in Sultanpuri and a small business in local markets, but neither brought in a steady income. He was married and had two young children – a two-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son.

Chand had said he had gone to Mundka “to ‘see’ the work,” Kiran recalled. He ended up entering the septic tank without any safety equipment. According to Kiran, Chand went in first. When the others could no longer hear him, Arun followed. Sandeep entered. “When Sandeep could not hear Chand and Arun, he went in to save them but all three died,” said Priya, a Safai Karamchari Andolan volunteer working with the families.

For Kiran, no payout can undo what happened. “I am a single parent, my husband passed away several years ago and I have brought up my children on my own.”

Four months for one family

In March 2026, Rahul Bed, 33, a daily-wage labourer, was found dead after allegedly drowning while cleaning a drain in northeast Delhi’s Dilshad Garden.

Rahul Chauhan, Bed’s nephew, said that the family was paid in August, four months after the death. Bed was allegedly carrying out desilting work under the Public Works Department, though there were reports that the department disputed the claim.

A PWD official, speaking to Newslaundry on condition of anonymity, said the department was unsure about Bed’s employment status. Bed did not figure in its records, the official said, which held up the payout. An official at the Sub-Divisional Magistrate’s office in Gokulpuri confirmed to Newslaundry that the family received the money in August, and attributed the delay to the PWD.

Bed is survived by his parents and two brothers. According to Priya, the compensation amount reached his parents’ bank account in installments. 

A fact-finding team from the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) found that Bed had gone to collect two months of unpaid wages on the morning of the incident but was allegedly coerced into cleaning the drain, with payment reportedly made conditional on finishing the job.

‘Struggle’ for paperwork

One family is still waiting because the paperwork is yet to be complete. 

Vinod, 55, died in May while cleaning a septic tank in New Ashok Nagar, after a contractor hired him to clear a clogged sewer line. His son-in-law, Chandrapal, said that Vinod was a daily-wage labourer who took on the job for as little as Rs 100-200.

“No matter what the wage is being offered, nobody should be put through this work at the risk of their own lives,” said Bezwada Wilson, national convenor of the Safai Karamchari Andolan.

Vinod’s family has yet to be paid. He left behind his wife, Ragni, who depended on him financially, along with two sons and a daughter, all married. Chandrapal said that, despite his own poor health, he was pressing the family’s claim. He said he was not very literate and struggled to make sense of the government’s processes.

SKA volunteers have been guiding the family. “We have collected his file. His letter is made and has to go to the SDM office,” Priya said. The file – Vinod’s death certificate, Aadhaar card, news clippings and FIR – is set to be submitted to the SDM office.

Preparing and filing the paperwork can itself take one to two months, Priya said. “Cooperation and coordination from the government’s end is slow,” she said.

Wilson said no family should have to fight for a payout after losing someone to this work. “The families have to fight for their rights as the agencies are unable to release it in the earliest possible manner,” he said.

For some families, the wait stretches into ‘years’

For others, the ordeal is measured not in months but in years, according to them.

At a recent press conference at the Delhi Press Club, organised by SKA around sanitation workers and compensation, families spoke about their long-running battles with government agencies.

Among them was Pushpa from Haryana. Her husband, Sajjan Kumar, died cleaning a Delhi sewer in 2005, she said. Renu Chhachhar, coordinator of SKA’s Sewer Workers’ Platform, described Pushpa’s years-long pursuit of the funds, a trail of memorandums and meetings that has led nowhere. Wiping away tears, Pushpa at first refused to speak when called upon.

“I have been fighting for my husband’s death for years, but nothing has happened,” was all she could manage before breaking down and returning to her seat.

Mangal, 28, a resident of Amrit Vihar, said he has been waiting since his father died in 2015 while cleaning a septic tank in Delhi. He recalled rushing to the spot after hearing the news. With no one helping his father, he tied a rope around his waist and climbed into the tank to pull him out.

“It was extremely smelly. There were two people who had gone to clean the tank, one of whom was my father. I caught hold of one person, who I was told was not my father. Then, I also fainted. People nearby pulled us out and by the time I regained consciousness, my father’s body was wrapped in plastic for post-mortem,” he said.

His mother later died of ill health, Mangal said. More than a decade on, the family has received nothing, they said. With younger siblings to support, he now drives for cab aggregators in Delhi.

‘I am sick of proving it’

Data maintained by the Safai Karamchari Andolan shows that five people have died in Delhi while cleaning septic tanks in 2026, with the countrywide figure at 126.

Government figures for the country point to a far higher toll. Between January 1, 2021 and June 30, 2026, 332 sanitation workers died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks across the country, the government said in the Lok Sabha.

Wilson said even documenting a death is a struggle. “Often police do not give us the FIR or necessary documentation. We are not allowed to enter police stations. They questioned our volunteers why they were representing the families of the deceased,” he said. Gathering photographic proof of a death is equally hard, he said. For an organisation that has spent years documenting manual scavenging and hazardous sanitation work, having to establish, again and again, that these deaths happen at all has become exhausting.

Recalling the years spent assembling photographic evidence to prove the practice exists before the Supreme Court, Wilson said: “I am sick of proving it.”

Newslaundry has emailed questions to the PWD’s East Zone office, the SDM office in Kanjhawala, and the social welfare and rehabilitation department of the Delhi government about the delays in disbursing compensation to the families of workers who died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. 

This report will be updated if a response is received.

Our new project visits the landscape described in Vande Mataram as it stands today, to ask what has become of the country the national song sings about. Support it here.