“He came to me and said, ‘Neeraj bhai ne bulaya hai’. ‘Tanki saaf krni hai, (Neeraj sir has called me. A tank has to be cleaned)’” says Aarti. Arun left.

A few hours later, another call came. This one was to tell Aarti that her husband had fainted inside the septic tank.

“When I reached there, they said he is no more. I had seen him two hours ago. Why did he go inside? It was not his job,” says Aarti, recalling that Arun was usually outside the tanks, operating what she calls the “tractor” — an informal term used among tank cleaners to denote the machine that extracts sewage out of a tank using a pipe while other workers are inside the tank, pushing the waste towards the pipe.

As Aarti holds on to the couple’s three boys — all between the ages of 6 and 8 — Arun’s elder brother, Narender, says that he had been working with Neeraj for more than five years.

“They didn’t give him any safety gear. He went there with his neighbours, Sandeep and Chand. They were asked on the phone to just remove the water from the tank. No one was supposed to go in,” says Narender.

Arun was not the first one to go inside. When the tractors couldn’t clear the tank mechanically, the contractor forced one of them to go in and clean it manually.

“Something got stuck inside. So, to clean it, the contractor forced Chand to go inside and clean it. He had been working with the contractor for a long time. He couldn’t say no,” says Shivani, nephew of Chand.

“We have still not told his wife and his two kids about the incident. They think he is admitted,” adds Shivani, standing outside the mortuary of Sanjay Gandhi Hospital.

When Chand didn’t come out after 10-odd minutes, Arun followed him inside.

Sandeep was waiting outside anxiously. Having recently lost his job, Sandeep also couldn’t afford to say no and had to jump in to save his neighbours, who had got him the contract through their reference.

About two lanes behind Arun’s house, Sandeep’s wife, Nisha, stands in front of the family’s rented lodgings.

“I was leaving home for some work and Sandeep was still at home. I told him I would be back soon after dropping our daughter to school. By the time I came back, he wasn’t there. My mother-in-law said that he had got some work,” she says.

The next thing Nisha recalls is that her uncle called her to say that Sandeep was no more. “I have a 10-year-old daughter. My in-laws. What work am I supposed to find?” she says.