They are municipal conservancy workers responsible for removing the filth and garbage from the lanes and bylanes of Nashik. Most of them live in slums and get paid Rs 3,200 a month. One of them, Keshav Bhuktare, is working double shifts to be able to send his two children to school after marrying off the elder daughter.

His colleague Hanuman Thorat has a bank balance of Rs 2,200 after buying a two-wheeler and has to pay a few hundred rupees every month towards the vehicle loan. Subhash Pawar is worse off with only Rs 300 in his account and has to feed a family of five. Laxman Shirsad got married recently and they used fake jewellery for the occasion.

Life, for them and dozens of their colleagues, was not being kind. But a month ago, they say it turned downright cruel when they were among 100 conservancy workers in Nashik who were slapped a ‘final notice’ by a co-operative bank asking them to repay loan amounts between Rs 11 lakh and Rs 15 lakh they had supposedly taken five years ago.

Their crisis and a complicated web of financial transactions and indications of an alleged scam ended at the door of former Union minister and senior Congress leader Buta Singh. His son Sarabjot was arrested by the CBI on Friday, allegedly for taking a bribe to cover up the loan scandal through his father’s office of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes. But the workers lament that their plight, which is at the root of the alleged scam, has been ignored amid the frenzy over the latest political scandal.

... contd.