An old menstruation taboo killed her. This time, a man went to jail

Every winter, in Nepal’s snow-covered hills, young women keep dying because of a deadly superstition.

The tradition here says that any woman who has her period must be banished outside, to a cowshed or makeshift bunker, no matter how cold or dangerous. This has been a ritual, believed to protect the purity of the village, for as long as anyone can remember.

But this winter, someone was finally arrested in such a death — a first in Nepal, according to law enforcement officials. The case has set off a national debate about women’s rights, tradition, law and punishment.

Nepali authorities have jailed the brother-in-law of a young woman who died in a shed this month in the remote Achham district, in the far west. Many Nepalis have been disturbed by her death, and one newspaper called the taboo — called chhaupadi (pronounced CHOW-pa-dee) — a “national shame.”

Human rights activists have been pressing authorities to enforce a law that went into effect last year that punishes family members who exile menstruating women from their own homes. Still, villagers continue to do it and many residents in Achham are upset that someone was sent to jail.

“The police are just adding pain over pain,’’ said Krishna Budha, chief of the village where the young woman died. “She had gone to the hut on her own, taking part of our culture.”

But Nepal’s highest authorities intervened, leading police officers to make the arrest. An investigation is underway.

In the past few weeks, villagers have been ordered to destroy dozens of chhaupadi huts and Nepal’s home ministry has threatened to cut off government aid to families that do not comply with a law that bans the chhaupadi ritual.

“The police did a good job this time,” said Pashupati Kunwar, a leading anti-chhaupadi activist. “This has sent a warning.”

In Nepali language, chhaupadi means someone who bears an impurity. Menstruating women are considered polluted, even toxic, and from the earliest age, people here are taught that any contact with a menstruating woman will bring bad luck.

An oppressive tradition has evolved around this taboo, including the construction of a separate hut for menstruating women to retreat to at night and then sleep in. Some of the spaces are as tiny as a closet, walls made of mud or rock, basically menstruation foxholes. Each year, at least one woman, usually more, and often young, dies in such a tiny space from smoke inhalation, a snake bite or exposure to the cold.

On Dec 2, it happened again.

Shortly after sunrise, according to police officials, relatives of Parbati Budha, 21, sensed that something was wrong. Budha, who lived in a mountain village about a two-day drive from the capital, Kathmandu, was usually an early riser. She was known in the village as a determined worker who was quite bright; she graduated from 12th grade, unusual for girls from her village.

But on this morning, she did not emerge from her chhaupadi hut. When her sister-in-law and brother-in-law went to check on her, they found her on the shed’s floor, face down. Investigators said she had built a small fire inside the hut to keep warm during the freezing night and died from inhaling too much smoke.

Budha had married about a year and a half ago and moved in with her husband’s family, as most women do in rural Nepal. Her husband worked in a sari showroom in neighboring India, and police officials say it was her husband’s brother, Chhatra Raut, 25, who pressured Budha to move out to the shed.

The news about Budha’s death quickly spread, dismaying human rights activists. The activists, including Kunwar, asked local police to investigate, but the officers refused. The officers said that nobody in the village had complained about the young woman’s death and therefore there was no case.

But the activists kept up their pressure. And in Kathmandu, the tide has turned against chhaupadi, which has become something of an embarrassment to those trying to modernise Nepal.

After hearing what happened, Nepal’s attorney general, Agni Prasad Kharel, stepped in and ordered police officials to open an investigation, which quickly led them to the brother-in-law. The police arrested Raut and are holding him in a small jail. He faces a three-month sentence if found guilty of breaking the chhaupadi law, which makes it a crime to pressure a woman into seclusion.

Kedar Nath Sharma, a spokesman for the Home Ministry, said that any members of a family still practicing chhaupadi would not get the usual government allowances for elderly people and single women, concessional loans or recommendations for a school scholarship or government job.

He said the Nepali government was serious about ending this tradition once and for all.

“Women are dying in these huts,” he said.

© 2019 New York Times News Service