A few weeks ago, we had had written in these columns about the national capital’s “fuming underbelly”, an increasingly disturbing ecosystem of organised crime, narcotics, extortion, gang violence and contract killings that appears to be growing beneath the surface of the city’s everyday life. The concern was not about one isolated incident, but about a pattern of the criminal networks are changing faster than the systems meant to contain them.
The murder of a sanitation worker in East Delhi has now provided another, particularly worrying, dimension to that argument. A young sanitation worker was stabbed to death in Kalyanpuri while on duty. Police suspect that the victim may even have been mistaken for another person because of a physical resemblance. The killing triggered protests among sanitation workers, who demanded immediate action and compensation for the victim’s family.
At first sight, this may appear to be another murder in a city that unfortunately witnesses too many. But it is the circumstances surrounding the crime and its aftermath that should worry the administration.
The most disturbing element is that the alleged criminal ecosystem has apparently penetrated to such a low economic and social level that even a sanitation worker can become the target of what appears to be a targeted killing. Contract killings and gang violence are no longer necessarily confined to businessmen, property dealers, politicians or wealthy individuals caught in criminal rivalries. When violence reaches people at the very bottom of the economic ladder, it suggests that the criminal economy has acquired a much wider and deeper reach.
And that is where a crime begins to become a law-and-order challenge. The immediate aftermath of the killing demonstrated this vividly. Sanitation workers threatened collective action, raising the prospect of disruption to essential civic services across Delhi. A murder, therefore, had the potential to snowball into a citywide administrative crisis. What began as a criminal investigation quickly acquired a political and public-order dimension.
The police response, including the detention of a local MLA, subsequently became a political controversy in itself. The AAP alleged that its MLA had been abducted by the police, while Delhi Police denied the charge and maintained that due process was being followed. The controversy was serious enough to enter the judicial arena through a habeas corpus proceeding.
There is an important lesson here. When the murder of a sanitation worker has the capacity to paralyse an essential municipal service, trigger a political confrontation and require extraordinary administrative intervention, the state needs to examine not merely the murder but the ecosystem in which the murder occurred.
The government had to move quickly to address the financial concerns of the bereaved family. But the matter was complicated by the fact that the deceased worker was employed through an outsourced agency.
This is not an insignificant detail. Delhi relies extensively on contractual and outsourced manpower for essential public services. Yet when an outsourced worker dies in circumstances connected with his employment, responsibility can become blurred between the government agency, the contractor and the actual employer.
That ambiguity cannot be allowed to become an excuse for delaying assistance to a victim’s family. Delhi has had enough experience with the vulnerabilities of outsourced sanitation and sewer workers. The larger issue is not outsourcing a public function but outsourcing accountability.
The Centre and the Delhi government must recognise that Delhi’s law-and-order problem cannot be treated as an episodic political football. The constitutional division of responsibilities may be complicated, but the criminal does not care which government controls which department. For the ordinary citizen, the question is, is the city safe?
The threatened sanitation workers’ strike after the Kalyanpuri murder was more than a labour dispute. It showed how quickly a criminal incident can become a civic emergency.
Delhi needs mechanisms to prevent such incidents from triggering wider industrial action.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms,
Development & Justice
