Kathmandu, Nepal – at the age of 13, Bishwokarma met a man 10 years older than her. It was fall in Nepal during the happy Tihar light festival. They shared a cigarette.
A few days later, he said he wanted to spend a night with her. Bishwokarma, who asked to use her family name, fearing the stigmatization that still follows her, says she did not understand what it involved, but she accepted. Boys and sex were always a mystery for her. She had other concerns at the time.
“I wanted to walk in new jeans and a t-shirt, feeling good,” she said.
Shortly after night together, the man left for another neighborhood and cut off contact.
She was about three months old when she discovered that she was pregnant. She kept the news for her, fearing the humiliation of her mother and her sisters and others in her village. But soon the whole village knew it. The mockery started. He became even more unbearable after the birth of the baby.
A news that a single girl had given birth quickly at birth, she said.
About two weeks after giving birth to a little girl, she told her neighbors that the baby was missing. The neighbors started to find. They found the baby floating in a septic pit and called the police.
Bishwokarma was handcuffed.
‘Completely alone’
In April 2024, the Dang district court sentenced Bishwokarma to 16 years and six months to the juvenile reform of Bhaktapur, the only correctional establishment in Nepal for girls, located in Sanothimi, just outside Katmandu.
Bishwokarma, now 18, says that she wants someone to have protected her, or that she had enough to protect herself.
“I was completely alone,” she said.
She is one of the 20 girls under the age of 18 who have arrived at the juvenile home in the last decade which has been accused of infanticide or ending the life of a newborn baby – all have been tried and sentenced to adulthood. Four called on their business and have been released, but the others are still at the juvenile center. Some are serving sentences up to 20 years while others are in prison in prison.
Defenders of the rights of the child say that these girls should never have found themselves here in the first place. The real question, says Ajay Shankar Jha, Executive Director of the Public Defender Society of Nepal and vice-president of the Nepal Bar Association, is “why are they doing these things?”
Desperate decisions
All the girls and women of the juvenile installation who have been accused of infanticide, or to end the life of a newborn baby are, like Bishwokarma, rural Nepal where poverty is plagued by reproductive health education – although officially included in the school program – is rare and incoherent.
Sex and pregnancy in girls are taboo, but common. According to the survey, around 14% of girls aged 15 to 19 were pregnant.
These pregnancies, especially in rural Nepal, come with punishing stigma, which can sometimes push girls like Bishwokarma to make desperate decisions.
“They do it to avoid society,” explains Rabindra Bhattarai, a lawyer based in Kathmandu who helped the four girls who were released on appeal. They were all released after serving five to six years at home for minors.
Shame led Bishwokarma to the edge. She says that she couldn’t face living at home once everyone discovered that she was pregnant. She tried to hide from a friend, but the parents of the friend discovered the truth and expelled her. From that moment, she wandered in the forest where no one would see her. She went out at night to seek food, whatever the remains she could find, then slept in the courtyard of a stranger.
Meanwhile, she remembered the radio advertisements of her childhood who warned people of the effects of smoking on pregnant women, that it could cause miscarriage. Desperate, she turned to cigarettes and marijuana, but the method failed.
When she was eight months pregnant, her mother found her and brought her home but always scolded her to get pregnant. Even after giving birth to her baby, humiliation never stopped. His neighbors called the baby “a childless child”. Everyone avoids it; Even the local priest did not come to appoint his daughter.
Bishwokarma says that she had no connection with her baby when she threw him into the tank.
The law “is guilty”
Although stigma is a large part of what leads these girls to such actions, the law “is also guilty”, says Bhattarai, the lawyer.
Although the law prohibits sexual relations with a girl under the age of 18, she does not recognize this unique situation during the burden of a child of infanticide of a child resulting from sexual assault, says Bhattarai.
“The man who caused pregnancy should be prosecuted. It is contrary to the law to punish children by establishing the case as a crime, ”he says.
Violée girls can access abortion in the country. This has been legal since 2002, and they could get one with the consent of a tutor. But the law is also confusing. A penal code of 2017 limits the limit to 18 weeks in the event of rape while a 2018 law sets it at 28 weeks.
Access is also a problem. According to a 2021 survey, rural Nepal health centers provide services.
In some rural villages like that of Bishwokarma, the window to access legal abortion can be closed quickly. Many girls and even married women are not aware that abortion is an option. Even when they are aware, many do not get them.
They fear being tried for pregnancy itself but also to be simply seen in a clinic, explains Kirtipal Subedi, gynecologist and obstetrician.
“As they do it, they are already pregnant several months. By then, it is too late,” he adds.
The data collected from April 2019 to December 2020 show that around 73% of the 1,835 women looking for abortions in 22 Nepal sites were already more than 10 pregnant weeks when they asked for care.
As Bishwokarma asked for an abortion, she was already six months pregnant. She had finally contacted the responsible man. He denied paternity, then suggested an abortion. She accepted. They traveled 85 kilometers (53 miles) in a clinic outside the district where no one would recognize them. But when they arrived, the doctors refused them, saying it was too late.
Lighter phrases
Even throughout the justice process, children defenders say that the protections that the law offers to children are not applied. For example, Nepal introduced a juvenile system over a year ago to manage cases involving minors, but it is still inactive. Nepal is also a signatory of United Nations Convention on Children’s Rightswhich calls for last resort and for the shortest possible deadlines.
For example, although the 2018 children’s law authorizes the legal representation of Bishwokarma and an appropriate and fair legal process, it spent 21 days waiting for the trial, which prohibits the law. She was also questioned without a lawyer, a family member or anyone could explain what was going on.
“I couldn’t find a person to look at me with kind and loving eyes,” she says. “(But) why would anyone speak for me?”
Bishwokarma admitted to having threw his baby into the septic pit before the start of his trial.
BIMAL REPMI, the under-secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Justice Committee for Minors, says that minors are prosecuted according to their age and the provisions of the law. If a court orders the long -term placement of a child, he says: “We have no choice but to keep them in the correctional home for minors.”
Some plea groups are pressure for change. In March 2022, the forum for women, law and development asked the Supreme Court to fully decriminalize abortion in Nepal. This would mean allowing abortion beyond the current limit of 28 weeks in certain serious cases.
This would allow women and girls to ask for more help, explains Nabin Kumar Shrestha, lawyer for the non -governmental organization. Then they would see more options to approach their difficult situation.
A bill to modify the law on children is also under discussion in Parliament. He offers, among other things, fixing a maximum sentence of seven years for children.
`Little incitement to change ”
These days, Bishwokarma spends most of his days in a room weakly lit in the establishment filming tiny pearls on the string. The nights, she says, are the most lonely.
Like numerous holding establishments for minors in the country, the Center for Girls is tense. Most juvenile installations operate two to four times their planned capacity, which feeds violence, escape attempts and other high -risk behaviors.
In the girls’ center, up to a dozen girls share a single little room. The detention center has a capacity of 10, but is home to around 40 girls, says Shankar. Part of the problem is that girls continue to live there when they become adults, like Bishwokarma, who is 18 years old. Some are as old as 26 while others are as young as 14.
The minor house has no basic infrastructure, including a playground, educational establishments and health care, all that the State should provide under the children’s law. There is a school on the scene, but only boys can attend a minor separate detention center in the same complex, because the management prefers not to mix the two populations, explains Pravin Silakar, social worker for the establishment of girls.
This type of environment is not conducive to children and leaves lasting effects, says Shankar. “There is little incitement to change.”
REMMI claims that funding is a major obstacle to provide a better environment.
For the moment, Bishwokarma is waiting for his sentence to take its course. She says that no one in her family came to visit her or called.
“I have been sitting like this for years, and I don’t know how many years I can endure,” she said.