Dalit girl forced to clean excreta by hand after defecating in open at School in MP
Special Correspondent
NewsBits.in
Bhopal/Chhatarpur: In another incident that indicates the excesses being meted out to children, especially of underprivileged sections, a six-year-old Dalit girl was forced to clean her own excreta by hand by a village strongman in Chhatarpur district.
The girl, a student of class 1, was forced to defecate in the open on the premises of her school as the school does not have a toilet. The incident occurred at village Gudhora under Lavkushnagar police station of the district.
The strongman Pappu Singh happened to pass when the girl was defecating and he reportedly got angry. First he scolded the girl badly and then forced her to collect the excreta by her hand and throw it elsewhere.
The girl did so and reached home crying. The incident caused huge resentment among the dalit settlers in the village. Meanwhile, Pappu Singh reportedly issued open threat to anyone trying to go against him.
The villagers, along with family of the girl however went to the Lavkushnagar police station and got a complaint registered. Sub-inspector KL Thakur said that case has been registered under SC/ST Atrocities Act and other relevant sections against Pappu Singh and a search was on for him.
Caste-based discrimination is rampant in Bundelkhand region and schoolchildren especially experience major bias. A survey conducted three years ago showed huge discrimination with dalit children – from being forced to eat mid-day meals in marked places, sitting in last row of classrooms, being referred to by caste identity, not allowed to touch food, not allowed to drink water from common facility and others.
The survey by Dalit Adhikar Abhiyan had identified 70 kinds of discrimination, 54 of them rampant in Bundelkhand, of which Chhatarpur is a part.
