She was arrested for forcing students to clean toilets by hand

The police made an arrest this Monday a school principal and teacher in South India for forcing a few students to manually clean the septic tank, a practice prohibited by law but not eradicated and usually relegated to the lowest levels of hierarchical Indian society.

“The principal of Bharathamma and Professor Muniyappa have been arrested” in connection with the case, Superintendent of Police M. Narayan, from the Kolar district where the incident took place, in the southern state of Karnataka, told EFE.

The arrests took place after several pictures taken by a teacher at the center were made public, showing some students between the ages of 11 and 15 cleaning a septic tank manually and without protection in a school where members of minority communities are housed.

Manual cleaning of septic tanks, a practice hazardous to health due to toxic gases released from toilets, has been banned by law since 1993, but its eradication has not been effective and remains a common task in some regions of India.

In addition to the risk of poisoning that it carries with it, And this work is a reason for discriminationsince it is usually performed by Dalits or untouchables, members of the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system.

According to the government’s National Safai Karamcharis Commission (NCSK, in English), which ensures the welfare of workers in this sector, 988 people died between 1993 and March 2022 while cleaning septic tanks.

However, the NGO Safai Karamchari Andolan, which works to eradicate manual toilet cleaning, puts the figures at 1,760 deaths during that period.

This association adds that 98 percent of the workers are Dalits – untouchables – and women, and specify that the salary they receive is between 180 and 200 rupees (between 2.17 and 2.41 dollars) per month per household.

On November 15, four people died of suffocationor they were cleaning the inside of the septic tank in the village in western India, according to the Indian newspaper Hindustan Times.