How Many More Daughters Must Die in Straw Cages Before We Wake Up? Isn’t It Time We Choose Humanity Over Tradition?
On Saturday night 12th July 2025, 28-year-old Kamala Damai of Kanchanpur was forced into an unsafe chhau goth (Menstrual Hut) because she was menstruating and was banned from her own home.
That fragile hut, barely covered with straw, became her prison and her grave. Around 10 PM, a venomous krait snake bit her. By the time she was rushed to the hospital, she was already gone leaving behind three children who will never feel their mother’s embrace again.
Kamala’s death has shaken the Sudurpaschim as well as the whole Nation. Yet, how many more women must die before this cruelty ends? Even today, hundreds of such huts still stand monuments of ignorance and fear forcing women into darkness, danger, and silence.
“This is not just a tragedy,” said a local leader. “It’s a shame on all of us.” And it is. Because even when homes are safe and warm, women are still cast out, humiliated, treated as impure victims of a superstition carried from the hills to the plains
After her death, the local government finally ordered all chhau goths to be demolished and promised fines for those who refuse. But words and demolitions alone won’t free women.
As one woman put it: “Until we destroy the superstition inside our minds this belief that women’s bodies anger gods tearing down huts outside means nothing.
Kamala’s story demands more than pity. It demands rage. It demands that we, as women and as a society, refuse to let another sister die in a straw cage.