Family of deceased trio in Ambujwadi tank case files FIR

MUMBAI: The family of the deceased trio who died after collapsing while cleaning a tank in a public toilet filed an FIR with the Malvani police on Saturday against unknown persons. The statement blames the negligence of civic officials of the P North ward.
“Many letters regarding the need for repairs in the public toilet were sent to the BMC, but they were never done,” reads the statement given by Parshuram Nishad, brother of the deceased Ramlagan Kevat and uncle of Suraj, 18, and Vikas, 20. “The trio fell unconscious while cleaning the water tank of the toilet on Thursday due to difficulty in breathing, leading to their deaths.”
Chimaji Adhav, senior police inspector of Malwani police station, said, “We are investigating both the BMC and the community-based organisation (CBO) that had been given the responsibility of the day-to-day functioning of the toilet. We filed an FIR on Sunday against the CBO.” Kiran Dighavkar, assistant commissioner of P North ward, said the BMC had submitted all the necessary details to the police, regarding the conditions of the agreement with the CBO, the division of responsibilities and so on.
On the day after the deaths, the BMC had issued a show cause notice to the CBO, asking for an explanation for the workers’ presence in the tank with toxic fumes—which, its preliminary investigation concluded, was a septic tank, a charge which would amount to manual scavenging. The police and local residents, however, said the tank was a water tank. “The executive engineer of the ward will examine the toilet again on Tuesday to check whether it was a septic tank or water tank,” said Dighavkar.
According to locals, the water that the Kevat family received in the underground water tank was borewell water or khara pani, which regularly caused problems with the water motor that transported the water to the overhead tanks for use. “We had made arrangements for meetha (soft) pani,” said Sunil Mishra, a fellow member of the CBO. “So the family was cleaning the tank before the new water went in.”
Aman Sheikh, 17, the fourth person who fell into the tank but survived recounted the same tale to Shubham Kothari, a member of the Jan Haq Sangharsh Samiti which is helping the family in the legal fight. “Aman told us the cleaning had started the day before,” he said. “But the next day, when they reached the sludge left at the bottom of the tank—which included a shallow depth of mud, dirt and fecal matter—the toxic fumes knocked them out. The fumes and fecal matter had likely come in due to a leak in the partition between the water tank and septic tank.”
The fault, then, according to the locals, lies with the structural integrity of the toilet. Mishra said that at least 20 complaints had been sent to the BMC about various problems in the toilet. HT has seen four of them, with Ramlagan’s signature on them, dated between 2020 and 2022, with complaints ranging from broken toilet seats to the constant need of repairs to the water motor to leaks in the pipes connected to the toilet. One complaint in 2020 talks about how anyone could lose a life because of the condition of the toilet.
Whether the deaths took place in the septic tank or the water tank does not absolve the BMC of its responsibility, said Anand Jagtap, retired OSD, slum sanitation programme, BMC. “The BMC is supposed to provide for cleaning of the septic and water tanks, as it is the owner,” he said. “The CBO is just a user group appointed for the toilet’s day-to-day functioning. It does not have the funds, equipment or expertise to clean the septic or water tank.”
Jagtap added that while the BMC was not allowed to officially charge for cleaning, its workers and officials often ask for money to carry out the cleaning.
Speaking on the responsibility of the BMC in CBO-run public toilets, Dighavkar said that the CBO was supposed to ask the BMC to come and carry out the cleaning of the septic tank with its desludging machine. “If it is a water tank, however, it is the CBO’s responsibility,” he said.