New Delhi, April 9 -- A Dalit sanitation worker allegedly died while manually cleaning a deep drain in Delhi's Dilshad Garden without safety gear, supervised by a mechanism on March 30.

Rahul Bed, aged 32, was a contractual sanitation worker from the Valmiki community who was manually desilting an eight to 10-feet-deep drain in Tahripur. According to the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch, its fact-finding team found that the incident took place under the jurisdiction of the Public Works Department, raising serious concerns about negligence and basic labour protections.

On the day of the incident, Rahul had gone to collect two months' of unpaid wages but was reportedly forced into cleaning the drain in hazardous conditions, DASAM s...