Bombay HC orders ₹30 lakh relief for hazardous-cleaning deaths

The Bombay High Court has given Maharashtra six months to identify every person who died while engaged in hazardous cleaning and pay ₹30 lakh in relief to each affected family.

A division bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande said the state and local authorities must provide immediate relief to dependants even when a private housing society, contractor or another employer hired the worker. Authorities may later recover the amount from those responsible.

The court was hearing challenges to Maharashtra resolutions issued in 2019 and 2025 that placed compensation liability on private societies and contractors in such cases. Petitioners said this had delayed or blocked relief after local authorities said private employers were responsible.

The state told the court that it had identified 81 deaths linked to manual scavenging and paid ₹10 lakh each to the families, totalling ₹8.10 crore. The bench said the continued deaths indicated that legal safeguards on manual scavenging and hazardous cleaning were not being effectively enforced.

The court also directed rehabilitation without differentiating between sanitation workers and manual scavengers.