Badaun gets toilets in fitting ode to victims
After the alleged rape and gruesome murder of two sisters in Badaun district in May this year, the “Toilet for Every House” campaign was launched on Sunday from the Katra Sahadatgunj village in Badaun district where the incident took place.
The girls were targeted when they reportedly went out to relieve themselves in the absence of toilet in their home. NGO Sulabh International took the initiative to change the civic amenities by building toilets for every household in the village and 108 Sulabh ( low- cost) toilets were thrown open to public at a function in the village on Sunday as a tribute to the two sisters.
Sulabh founder and noted social reformer Bindeshwar Pathak said: “Absence of toilet in a house is responsible for incidents of rapes and sexual assaults in villages. The non- availability of toilets in the village made these two sisters go out in the open at night to attend the call of nature, when they were allegedly raped and murdered and the bodies hanged from a tree.”
Sulabh has already adopted the village in memory of the two girls, Dr Pathak said.
Dr Pathak said that the country needed about 120 million more latrines and added that in Uttar Pradesh, the available data showed that 77 per cent households in rural areas did not have toilets and women had to go for open- air defecation. Nearly 14 per cent households in the urban areas did not have toilets.
“For the first time in the country’s history, the issue of toilets has attained such an importance in the speech of the PM on Independence Day. So, I am confident that now everyone will have toilet in not too distant a future,” he said.
Dr Pathak further said he planned to set up a vocational training institute here that will make women self- reliant.