A 12-year-old mentally disabled girl who went out to relieve herself was mauled to death by a pack of stray dogs at Bhagwatidih village in Jharkhand’s Koderma district.
Koderama was state's first district to be declared open-defecation free in 2017 but the victim's family did not have a toilet inside their "pucca" house.
Madhu Kumari had gone out on Sunday morning to defecate with a few other children when she was attacked by the dogs, reportedThe Telegraph."Mentally impaired and not able to walk properly," Madhu became a victim of the attack while others ran away.
The incident has come as a major embarrassment for the administration that built 68,400 toilets in the area in an open-defecation-free drive last year. It was part of the prime minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat mission to build 100 million new toilets in India, where according to Unicef, around 524 million people, nearly half the population, defecate in the open.
Initial inquiry suggested that the victim's house was not covered in the toiletscheme as they lived in a pucca house and could afford a toilet. Koderma deputy commissioner told the paper that Madhu's family did not figure on the BPL list of toilet beneficiaries. "She had a pucca house so her family's name did not figure in our baseline. Now we learn their home did not have a toilet," DC Sanjiv Kumar Besra was quoted as saying.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das has ordered a financial assistance of Rs one lakh to the family of the deceased, and a three-member committee headed by deputy development commissioner will probe the incident and submit a report.
