A 15 year old girl dies after being banished to a shed for having a period

A TEENAGER in a remote Nepalese village banished by her parents to a shed because she was having her period in a banned practice has died.

Roshani Tiruwa's family and friends gather after she was found dead in the hut after starting a fire to keep warm. She was in the third day of mendstuating. Picture: Ashok Dahal

A TEENAGE girl has died after she was banished to a poorly ventilated shed because she was having her period.

Roshani Tiruwa, 15, was forced to stay in the mud and stone hut in a Hindu custom that has been banned in Nepal for more than a decade.

Hindus consider menstruating women as impure and they are forced to stay in makeshift huts or even cow sheds until their period is over in a practice known as chhaupadi.

Police have launched an investigation into the girl’s death, which is the second in the same region blamed on chhaupadi, the Daily Mirror reported.

Police Inspector Badri Prasad Dhakal told the Thomson Reuters Foundation: “While we are waiting for the post-mortem report for the cause of her death, we believe she died due to suffocation.

“She had lit a fire to keep herself warm before going to bed in the shed which had no ventilation.”

Truwa’s father told Nepalese newspaper My Republica that she had had an evening meal at her home in Gajra village, in Achram district, more than 480km from Kathmandu, around 6pm on Friday and went inside the shed to sleep.

When it was late in the morning and she had not been seen, he gave her a call from outside.

“Then we saw her dead body,” he said.

The newspaper reported that Truwa was a ninth grader at Rastara Bhasah Secondary School and was undergoing the third day of menstruation at the time of her death.

Menstruating women are banished to sheds in western Nepal in a Hindu practice that has been banned for more than a decade. Picture: Getty

The chhaupadi practice means that women are banned from taking part in normal family activities during menstruation and after childbirth. they can have no contact with men of the household, Aljazeera reported.

The Hindu tradition is common to all castes in the western region of Nepal. Women who violate the practice are blamed for crop failures, illnesses and sudden deaths of animals.

Nepal’s Supreme Court banned the practice in 2005, but it remains rooted in many villages, especially in remote hill areas of Nepal.

Mohna Ansari of Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission told Aljazeera that local leaders must do more to enforce the ban.

“We have a legal ban but the law enforcement forces have not been strong about implementing it,” she said.

“It is crucial for us to work to change the attitudes of the people and raise awareness against this practice.”