People mock me for smelling bad said Ravi in Govindpuri in south delhi. “But they don’t understand. I just can’t bring myself to bath in there”. Ravi doesn’t have a toilet at home and his only option is the public facility. The same one his mother and sister use everyday. I’d rather go days without a shower than step into the public toilet alone. They attack us with blades if we enter the stalls they have occupied.
The they ravi is wary of are drug addicts, who have taken over many of the community toilets in the city. Scattered matchboxes, broken syringes, crumpled foil and empty pill strips litter the floors of these facilities. The stench of rot clings to the walls, mixing with the sharp tang of smoke curling from scorched aluminum foil. The glassy eyed addicts carve out their own corners inside, their fingers trembling over stolen syringes.
Women approach such toilets in groups, never alone. Children hold their breath and count the seconds as they dart in and out. In dakshin puri sanjay’s camp, suresh and chahti both 80 year old women sit on a worn out bed outside the community toilet keeping a silent vigli at the entrance. Suresh explaining how chahti and she had assumed their role over the years to ensure that nothing bad happened in the evenings when addicts took over the facility.
The addicts don’t just use the washroom they turn it into a market place for drugs buying and selling within its cramped stalls at night said chahti, who along with suresh earn 500 a month as sweepers an income that is too meagre for them to add a toilet in their homes.
The story repeats itself across the city Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board manages these community toilets. There are 662 jan suvidha complexes serving over 15 lakh people, most of them residents of the capital’s slums. DUSIB employs staff or contractors to maintain the toilets bu the caretakers are vulnerable to the threats of the drug addicts. At the grimy ill maintained structure near seemapuri bus depot sanitation workeR Mohammad Saeed took off his shirt to reveal a fresh wound on his shoulder
In 2017 a 21 year old caretaker of a public toilet in west Delhi Nangloi was stabbed to death for opposing drug consumption there. In Seemapuri, a sanitation worker bears fresh blade wounds the consequence of trying to enforce order. In Bawana mothers speak in hushed tones of daughters who disappeared last seen near the shattered stall doors of the abandoned toilet.
Bu there is danger for the addicts too. Suresh Kushal an NGO worker, gestured toward the scattered syringes in the Seemapuri facility. The addicts reuse syringes, digging through trash to find one that seems usable. We’ve tried HIV/AIDS intervention drives, but the cyle continues.
Thousands live in a JJ cluster right next to the public convenience. Among them are Aaisha 30, her sister Murshida 32 and Muslima 34 all raising their children in the shadow of this decrepit and dangerous structure.
Muslima claimed that it was almost a daily dare to be able to use the toilet after 7pm.
At the public toilet st Seemspuri Machhi market the evidence of drug use isn’t’ just inside. A makeshift hut outside a wooden board leaning against the wall serves a shelter for the addicts who humble incoherently when asked what they are doing.
Peeking at the abandoned toilet across the street through the curtains of her house in Bawana’s JJ Colony, pooja 40 hesitated before speaking. That washroom, like every other in the colony, became a drug den over the years. When I saw kids following the addicts inside, I knew I had no choice. I sent my wife and children back to our village.
He conceded that there were certain Lacunae in the terms and conditions for the agencies granted the tender for cleaning the community toilets blocks which would be corrected in the next cycle.
The grim reality inside Delhi’s dens of fear and addiction reveals a deep-rooted crisis that goes beyond individual choices—it’s a reflection of systemic neglect, poverty, and lack of mental health support. These hidden corners of the city, where lives are consumed by substance abuse and violence, demand urgent attention from authorities, civil society, and communities alike. Without comprehensive intervention, the cycle of despair will continue. Change begins with awareness, but it must be followed by compassion, resources, and a commitment to reclaim these lost spaces and lives.
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