Crushed with endless humiliation and pain, a class X girl in Maharashtra’s Beed district has approached the tehsil authority expressing her wish to end her life. Her ordeal began with rape, getting pregnant and losing her baby, getting to know that she was HIV positive and then being disallowed by her school to carry on with her education.
“If I am denied my right to education, what is the point in living? I want to end my life,” Mumbai Mirror quoted the girl’s letter as stating.
The girl was raped almost a year ago by an auto rikshaw driver, which left her pregnant. She delivered a girl on November 13, 2016, at Majalgaon hospital. Tragically, the baby, who was born positive, passed away exactly a month later, on December 13.
Despite all the sufferings, the girl decided to get her life back on track and returned to her school. On December 28, when she tried to enter her school in Ramnagar ashramshala, she was told that she couldn’t attend classes and that her ‘Leaving Certificate’ was ready.
“The school has expelled this girl and three teachers have conned her mother into signing the register of the school leaving certificate,” said Sattyabhama Saundarmal, secretary of Nirdhar organisation which is fighting for the rights of the HIV positive school girl. Sattyabhama is also planning a protest march in Majalgaon on Tuesday over the issue.
According to the report, the accused auto rikshaw driver, after raping the girl, threatened to kill her if she revealed his crime to anyone.
Shattered with the incident and his threat, she did not tell anyone until she was taken to hospital in November 2016. It was then that doctors found that she was pregnant and HIV positive.
It was after this that an FIR was registered against the accused Kundkar for rape and under sections of the Atrocities Act at Majalgaon rural police station. Kundkar was soon arrested.
Few days later, a school teacher visited the girl’s house on the pretext of seeing the child and tricked the girl into signing documents for a School Leaving Certificate.
