NEW DELHI (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of impoverished, low-caste Indians are still working with their bare hands to clean human excrement from open roads and millions of dry pit latrines across the country, despite Indian laws prohibiting such work, an international rights group said Monday in urging reform.

Ancient and deep-rooted patterns of caste discrimination have kept manual scavengers, as they are known, from escaping their traditional role as waste cleaners, Human Rights Watch said in a report.