'Caste persists despite reaching moon' : Bombay HC quashes private-shift on scavenging deaths

The Bombay High Court has come down heavily on manual scavenging, observing that while India has reached the moon, the "social evil" of the caste system persists, forcing citizens into work that is "below human dignity".

The HC made these comments while quashing a Maharashtra government policy that placed the burden of compensating the kin of workers who died during hazardous cleaning on their employers and private societies.

A division bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande, in an order passed last week, directed the state government to immediately compensate the victims' dependents. The government can subsequently recover the amount from the responsible private entities or employers, the order said.

The court asked the government to identify, within six months, all persons who have died while engaged in "hazardous cleaning" as defined under section 2(d) of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013.

Upon such identification, the state government shall pay compensation of Rs 30 lakh to the dependants of each such deceased person, the court said.

"In the 21st century, we boast about reaching the other side of the moon, yet the hard reality that stares us in the face is that the social evil of the caste system is still followed in our country, which forces some of our citizens to do work that is below human dignity," the HC said.

Though the Constitution guarantees all its citizens equality before the law, "even after 75 years of adopting the Constitution, our country is not free from the social evil that has haunted us for ages", it asserted.

"Manual scavenging is one such practice, which forces a particular class of community to undertake this inhumane practice for generations, despite prohibition imposed on it by various judicial pronouncements of the Supreme Court and statutes prohibiting such practice," the HC said.

The court passed the ruling on a writ petition filed by trade union Shramik Janata Sangh and others challenging Item 11 of the government resolution dated December 12, 2019 and April 30, 2025.

They had sought to quash and set aside the GRs, which made private individuals liable for payment of compensation on the death of manual scavengers instead of state/local authorities.

The petitions were filed, as the state government/local authorities failed to implement provisions of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013. The Act, adopted by the Maharashtra government, aims to prohibit the social evil of manual scavenging.

"The Act of 2013 does not discriminate against the workers engaged in hazardous cleaning on the basis of their employer. The intended object of the said enactment is to eliminate the dehumanising practice of manual scavenging," the court said.

Terming the policy "clearly violative" of the fundamental right of equality guaranteed under the Constitution, the bench struck down Item 11 in both GRs.

It ordered that the state and local authorities must immediately disburse the mandated compensation to families of deceased sanitation workers, regardless of whether they were employed publicly or privately, and subsequently recover the amount from private employers.