NEW DELHI: Three men died after inhaling toxic fumes inside a septic tank at a factory in west Delhi’s Mundka Industrial Area Friday, reports Devanshi Mehta. Police said the workers entered the tank one after another in a desperate bid to save the other.The victims, Chand (42), Arun (38) and Sandeep (32), were residents of Indra Jheel in Sultanpuri. Their families alleged they were sent inside without any safety gear.
Police arrested Suraj Marwah (50), the factory owner; Jayant (61), who worked at the factory; and Neeraj (25), the contractor and owner of the pumping vehicle. All three have been booked under sections 106 (death due to negligence) and 3(5) (common intention) of BNS, Section 9 of Prohibition of Manual Scavenging Act and relevant sections of SC/ST Act.Police said a PCR call was received at Mundka police station at 12.09pm stating that “three men who had entered the tank to clean it have fallen inside”. A senior officer said cops learnt that Marwah Printers had hired Neeraj, aresident of Nangloi, for cleaning a septic tank on the premises in street no. 1, Mundka Industrial Area. At the time of the incident, Neeraj was also engaged in the cleaning work.According to the victims’ families, Chand was the first to be sent inside the tank after the pumps failed to take out the remaining gunk stuck at the bottom. When he stopped responding, Arun climbed in to bring him out. Moments later, Arun also became unresponsive. Sandeep then entered the tank to rescue both, but he, too, collapsed after inhaling the poisonous gas. Neeraj, who had remained outside, immediately alerted the factory management and raised the alarm.Delhi Fire Service said firefighters rushed to the factory and pulled the workers out of the tank. However, all three men had died. Their bodies were shifted to Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Mangolpuri for postmortem.According to the workers’ families, none of them was hired to enter the septic tank, but were engaged to operate a machine fitted with pumps to extract sewage and asked to climb inside the tank after being offered some extra money. The families also claimed the three men were not provided any protective gear, oxygen support or safety harnesses. The workers, they alleged, were neither trained for manual septic tank cleaning nor informed about the dangers of entering the confined space.When TOI visited the factory Friday afternoon, police officers were in the process of sealing the premises as part of the investigation. Outside the industrial units, advertisements pasted on electric poles openly offered septic tank cleaning services. A resident said, “Every factory in the area has septic tanks and they are usually cleaned using machines. But everyone also knows that for a little extra money, workers are often sent inside without any safety equipment to finish the work.”
