New Delhi: They left home Friday expecting a day’s wage. Hours later, Arun, Chand and Sandeep were brought to the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital mortuary after dying inside a septic tank in Mundka, leaving behind wives, young children and elderly parents who depended entirely on their earnings.Outside the mortuary, relatives told TOI of lives interrupted mid-dream — a son’s birthday Chand was looking forward to, Arun’s hope of one day moving his children to a private school, and Sandeep’s pride over his daughter’s recent admission to one.Muskan still doesn’t know that her husband, Chand, had died inside the septic tank. “I don’t have the courage to tell my daughter that she has lost her husband,” Heera, Muskan’s mother, told TOI. “Their elder son is only two years old and never leaves his father’s side. This morning, when Chand was leaving for work, he kept saying, ‘Papa, don’t go.’ Now he keeps asking where his father is.”The couple’s younger son is just eight months old. Besides the elder son’s birthday in a few months, their wedding anniversary was also approaching, said a relative. Chand was not the only breadwinner whose family was shattered. Standing outside the mortuary clutching a photograph of his younger brother on his phone, Narender could barely speak. Arun, who earned around Rs 10,000 a month, supported his wife and three young children, all under the age of six.“For an extra Rs 200 or Rs 300, he was sent inside the tank to clean the sludge,” Narender said. “That little amount mattered to him because every rupee was for his children.” The family had enrolled the children in a govt school, but Arun dreamt of earning enough to shift them to a private school one day. “I haven’t had the heart to tell his wife what has happened,” Narender said.According to the family, Arun was not even assigned to enter the tank. The workers were operating suction machines to remove waste. When the pump failed to remove the sludge at the bottom, Chand was asked to climb inside. Arun later entered the tank to rescue him, but he, too, got trapped.Seeing both men collapse inside, Sandeep went in after them. “He has a 12-year-old daughter, and all he ever wanted was for her to keep studying so that she won’t have to do the kind of work we have been forced into for generations because we are Valmikis,” said his uncle, Surender (52). With years of savings, Sandeep recently admitted his daughter to a private school, hoping education would offer her a future beyond sanitation work. “That was his biggest dream,” Surender said.His wife, meanwhile, is still waiting for answers. “She doesn’t know anything yet. She just keeps asking what has happened,” another relative said. “Who will look after these families now?”
