A girl who was banned for menstruating has fallen victim to an outdated Hindu tradition resulting in her death.
The little girl died after being banished by the family
A 15-year-old girl has died in Nepal's western Achram district after she was banished to a hut because she was menstruating, Aljazeera reports. She was banned in accordance with an ancient Hindu practice that has been banned for more than a decade in the country, police said.
"We are investigating the case. We suspect that she died of suffocation from the smoke of a fire she lit to keep herself warm," local district inspector Badri Prasad Dhakal told the AFP news agency on Monday.
The innocent girl was identified as Roshani Tiruwa. Some Hindus view menstruating women as impure and in parts of Nepal they are forced to remain in a hut or cowshed for days, a practice known as chhaupadi.
While speaking to Nepalese newspaper 'My Republica', the father of the girl said she had had an evening meal at 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.
According to the newspaper, Truwa was a ninth grader at Rastara Bhasah Secondary School and was undergoing the third day of menstruation at the time of her death.
Under the chhaupadi practice, women are banned from taking part in normal family activities during menstruation and after childbirth, and can have no contact with men of the household.
The Hindu tradition is common to all castes in the region. Women who violate the practice are blamed for crop failures, illnesses and sudden deaths of animals.