Girl hangs herself over one rupee
for meal

MALDA, India (Reuters) - A 12-year-old girl has hanged herself after being told by her impoverished mother she could not afford one rupee to buy food at school, officials said on Saturday.

Sonia Khatun was upset after her mother, a widow, scolded her for asking for the money.

"She wanted just one rupee ... but her mother could not give her the money due to poverty," government official Nakul Chandran Mahato told Reuters by phone from Murshidabad district in West Bengal. "She was hungry," Mahato added.

Khatun lived in a village, 200 km north of Kolkata.
She hung herself from a makeshift bamboo structure on Friday.

The girl and her mother were homeless and living under a tarpaulin sheet given by the communist government of West Bengal which also supplied them meagre food rations.

India has witnessed strong economic growth in the past five years aided by its booming software and business process outsourcing industries. But millions of Indians have been untouched by the nation's 14-year-old economic reforms and live in abject poverty.

The UNDP Human Development Report, 2005, said despite India's impressive economic growth, half of its children are malnourished.

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