While some parents gave their children special glasses to catch the glimpse of the last solar eclipse of the year, these parents from Kalaburgi in Karnataka buried their specially-abled or Divyang, as the PM named them, children neck-deep in goat's dung and soil. The incident was reported at Taj Sultanpur in the outskirts of Kalaburgi district. The parents believe that burying them neck-deep under the dung during eclipses will 'cure' them. A four-year-old was unconscious by the time she was rescued by local activists.
Ashwini Madankar who has been working with the Janwadi Mahila Sangatane rushed to the spot immediately and asked to take the children out from a large heap of dried goat's dung. "There were three children who were buried neck-deep under the heaps of goat dung. Sanjana is a four-year-old girl who cannot sit or move from one place to another. The other two children were eight-year-old and eleven-year-old who had issues with movement. Fortunately, we reached the spot on time but the four-year-old child was unconscious," she said.
The activists tried to tell the parents that burying the children is not the solution but just a superstitious belief. "The parents come from poor households who struggle to afford even two meals a day. They told us that despite spending lakhs at the hospital to cure their children, nothing had changed. Hence, they took this step and did not mean to hurt their children but to see walk around as they do," she explained.
This is not the first time that these incidents have been reported from Kalaburgi. Earlier, several children were buried for many hours to cure them from disabilities. Unfortunately, they did not come to the notice of the media. Ashwini who has heard of such incidents added, "It is necessary to create awareness among people about the eclipses that occur every year. Since, they don't know much about the eclipse and what exactly happens, they tend to follow these beliefs which Godmen tell them."