Orissa's unwed mothers

Raped and ravaged, 4000 unwed tribal mothers in Orissa are struggling to survive with their fatherless children.

It is platform No 1 of Titlagarh railway station in Orissa. Budhani, with her four-year-old daughter, is hysterically running to every passenger. She is looking for her beloved Shiyram Sahu in every compartment of south-bound Samata Express. Everybody on the platform knows Budhani -- a beggar who has been waiting for her beloved for the past three years.

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Budhani is a destitute who shares the fate of over 4,000 unwed mothers in various parts of rural Orissa.

There are thousands of such destitute women who have accepted the fate of being unwed mothers - some ostracized and others ending up at mental asylums - struggling with their little ones.

"In the dense forests of Orissa there are at least three dozen clans of tribals where becoming a mother before marriage is not a taboo. While these innocent, freedom loving young tribal girls want to live a fun-filled life, the non-tribals or the outsiders take advantage of their simplicity and seduce them to satisfy their sexual lust. The result is, hundreds and thousands of young girls between 12 to 25 years giving birth to fatherless kids," says Yudhisthir Panigrahi of Bolangir.

Though earlier sex was not a taboo in the tribal society, there was no nasty motive behind co-habitation of men and women before marriage.