Overview
- The Aurangabad bench issued the order on July 6, directing the Maharashtra Social Justice Department to pay Rs 30 lakh to each family of two men who died cleaning a septic tank in Nanded in 2021.
- The court told the department to release payments within eight weeks of a proposal from the Nanded district collector and said any delay will incur 6% annual interest.
- While holding the state liable to make immediate payments, the bench said it may later recover amounts from contractors, agencies, or the private property owner who previously paid Rs 2.25 lakh to each family in 2022.
- Petitioners told the court and cited postmortems that both daily-wage workers died of asphyxia and drowning after entering the septic tank without protective gear and without required local-authority permission.
- The court ordered authorities to decide PEMSR Act rehabilitation eligibility for the petitioners within 12 weeks and framed the deaths as continuing evidence that manual scavenging persists despite legal bans and past judicial orders.