Manual scavenging

On days he stayed back home, he would eagerly wait for his father to return. “My sisters are too young to play with me. My mother is always busy with work. My father would take me out to the street to play with me. Sometimes I would fight with him, but he wouldn’t get angry,” said the boy.

The boy and his two sisters, aged seven and three, look half their age. “They have never had enough food. They are malnourished,” their mother Rani said.

But with the funds likely to reach them soon, the children may have enough to eat. The money could also mean that the family of four won’t have to immediately move out of their one-room set, much of which is occupied by their landlady’s belongings. “They hadn’t paid the R3,500 monthly rent for three months and would have had to vacate. Now it seems they may pay their rent soon,” said their landlady, Ramo.

The Delhi government, too, said it was ready to give R10 lakh to Anil’s family.

Anil had died just six days after losing his four-month-old son to pneumonia. Neighbours recounted how a day before his younger son’s death, he had gone asking neighbours to lend him money for medicines, but they weren’t able to help.

Anil’s death had occurred when a “weak” rope tied to his waist had snapped while he was being lowered into a sewer by a local resident, Satbir Kala, who wanted to stop seepage of water from the sewer into the basement of his building. Kala had allegedly gone ahead with the work despite repeated warnings that the act was unsafe.

To contribute for Gaurav’s future, donations can be made on https://www.ketto.org/fundraiser/anilsfamily.