Book killers of driver who promoted hygiene: govt

Incident occurs on eve of sanitation campaign

A day after an e-rickshaw driver was beaten to death as he objected to two persons urinating in the open, the Centre has asked the police to take strongest possible action against the culprits.

Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Monday visited the family of Ravinder Kumar, who was killed in northwest Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar area.

He handed over a cheque of Rs 50,000 in his personal capacity to Kumar’s family as temporary relief.

Naidu said he had spoken to the lieutenant governor of Delhi and that the state administration had agreed to give a grant of Rs 5 lakh as relief  to the family of the deceased.

The Centre has been strongly pushing the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), a scheme focused on urban sanitation for making the country open defecation-free by 2019.

In the past three years, close to 2.09 crore toilets have been built. As 60% of open defecation in the country takes place in rural areas, the thrust of the government as well as its publicity programmes are on the rural population.
Ironically, the incident occurred on the eve of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation coming out with an aggressive campaign called “Darwaza Band”, starting Tuesday.

Actor Amitabh Bachchan will formally launch the event in Mumbai. It is designed to encourage behavioural change in men who have access to toilets, but do not use them.

Naidu tweeted, “Sad that an e-rickshaw driver was beaten to death for stopping 2 people from urinating in public in Delhi. He was promoting Swachh Bharat (Clean India campaign) (sic).”

The incident occurred when the driver was waiting to pick up commuters at the GTB Metro station, less than 3 km from the Delhi University campus.

Kumar found the men urinating outside Gate Number 4 of the Metro station. He asked them to use the Sulabh Shauchalaya (pay-and-use toilet), located a few metres away.

Witnesses said as Kumar urged the youths to maintain hygiene, one of them got angry. When they saw other rickshaw drivers support Kumar, they left, but only after threatening him, a senior police officer said. The youths, accompanied by 15-20 men on bikes and e-rickshaws, returned an hour later, around 8 pm.

“They spotted Kumar and started thrashing him. They dragged and kicked him, and smashed his face, resulting in critical injuries. On realising that a large number of people had gathered, the assailants fled,” the officer said.