339 lives lost to manual scavenging in 5 years in New India

As many as 339 persons have lost their lives to the evil of manual scavenging in the last five years in India, the government informed Parliament this week.

These persons were killed while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. As per a reply by the Union social justice and empowerment ministry in the Lok Sabha, nine such deaths have been recorded this year till July. In 2022, this figure was 66; in 2021 it was 58 deaths, in 2020 it was 22; in 2019, as many as 117 persons lost their lives to manual scavenging while in 2018, a total of 67 deaths were recorded.