MUMBAI: RannSamar Foundation, a Mumbai-based all-India NGO, on Saturday organized a fund distribution program for families who have lost loved ones to manual scavenging—lives lost while cleaning septic tanks.Between 2018 and 2023, over 400 lives were lost while cleaning septic tanks and sewers across India. The year-wise figures are alarming: 76 deaths in 2018, 133 in 2019, 35 in 2020, 66 in 2021, 84 in 2022, and 49 in 2023.“These stark numbers underscore the systemic failure to eliminate the practice of manual scavenging despite legal prohibitions and repeated court interventions,” said advocate and social activist Abha Singh, who founded the NGO. The Foundation provides legal aid and financial assistance to families awaiting compensation or support.The program follows a Bombay High Court judgment from September 2021 in the case of Vimla Govind Charotiya & Others vs State of Maharashtra, argued by IPS officer and advocate Isha Singh on behalf of the petitioners. The court directed the state to compensate three petitioners with ₹10 lakh each for the loss of their husbands to manual scavenging while cleaning septic tanks.According to a press note, the RannSamar Foundation on Saturday distributed ₹30,000 each to three families: Vimla Govind Charotiya, Bani Bishwajit Debnath, and Neeta Kaleskar, whose husbands died while working under hazardous conditions on the premises of Morya SRA CHS Ltd in Mumbai—without oxygen masks, helmets, or other safety equipment.The Foundation also extended financial support to the family of Prakash Soma Parmar, who died in a similar manual scavenging incident in Ahmedabad, and the family of Nagnesh Ghumalvad from Nanded.
