Three sent to judicial custody over septic tank deaths at Mundka printing press

Three men, including a factory owner, have been remanded to 14 days of judicial custody in connection with the tragic deaths of three workers who died while cleaning a septic tank at a printing press in Mundka, Outer Delhi. The postmortem of the victims was conducted on Saturday, following the fatal incident at the site.

The three accused individuals who have been sent to judicial custody by the court are Suraj Marwah, the 50-year-old factory owner; Jayant, a 61-year-old staff member; and Neeraj, a 35-year-old contractor who also owned the vehicle used to transport the workers to the Mundka factory.

Following the incident, the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) of Mundka, Shiv Singh Meena, visited the printing press to personally assess the situation. Meena reported that there were absolutely no safety measures provided for the workers at the site. He stated that the workers were sent inside the septic tank without any gloves or oxygen cylinders to protect them.

The SDM also noted that the facility where the incident occurred was a printing press that discharged various chemicals directly into the septic tank. Meena informed the media that the local administration is planning to coordinate and distribute compensation to the families of the deceased workers within a week.

Further inquiries into the incident by the authorities revealed that the cleaning contract was worth Rs 20,000. This contract was designated strictly for machine-based cleaning, and there was absolutely no provision or instruction for any workers to enter the tank physically.

According to the Delhi Police, the septic tank itself was divided into three separate partitions. A suction machine mounted on a tractor had already been used to clean two of these partitions. The tragedy occurred when the workers entered the third partition to perform manual cleaning instead of using the machine.