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credit: @adivasilivesmatter

This is genuinely heartbreaking.

A 9-month pregnant woman, Anjali, passed away after being brutally kicked by police during an illegal midnight raid at her home while they were arresting her husband. She gave birth the next day, but tragically succumbed to her injuries, leaving her newborn in critical condition.

Since January, children across the Baiga villages of Bondari, Adori, Kundekasa, Korka, Gatiya, and Matla had been showing signs of an illness that kept recurring in a pattern of fever, followed by a rash and then a secondary infection.

A previously healthy child’s body would normally fight these infections and recover within days, but the administration had been strangely reluctant to answer why these children’s bodies could not.

By August, an Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) report identified a measles-rubella outbreak, along with Plasmodium falciparum malaria and E. coli contamination of water. According to the report, BMO Nimish Gautam had not even visited these remote areas before the deaths occurred and apparently learnt about the outbreak after the sarpanch contacted the SDM. The illness had to be named by a national body rather than by the local health officials already stationed in these villages, with no prior timely information reaching the District Health Department of Balaghat.

Two health officials, the District Vaccination Officer Dr Paresh Upalap and the District Malaria Officer Manisha Juneja, were removed from their posts in the weeks since the District Collector and a State Health Minister visited the area.

The Chief Minister Mohan Yadav was expected in Kundekasa on 29 August, where the temporary relief hospital has actually been set up, but, to the locals’ surprise, went to Korka and Bondari instead. Questions have also been raised about Devendra Kumar, District Officer of the District Women and Child Development Department, and his role in monitoring child deaths.

Regarding the unsettled death count, the health department has confirmed so far that over 200 children have been hospitalised and that nearly four thousand people across the affected villages have been screened. This has resulted in 800 cases of measles, malaria, diarrhoea, fever, rash, and other skin diseases.

At a time when women and oppressed communities were denied education, they dared to challenge the social order and opened schools for those who had been deliberately kept away from learning.

Savitribai Phule walked through humiliation and resistance every day, yet never stopped teaching.

Jyotiba stood beside her and fought against the injustice that denied people the right to learn.

Their legacy reminds us that a true teacher does not merely teach from books—they challenge ignorance, injustice, and inequality.

This Teachers’ Day, let us remember the Phules, who made education a weapon of liberation and a path toward equality.

Pic credit : @bakeryprasad

original post: https://www.instagram.com/p/DXn2RrDiVnA/

while her husband was assaulted with caste slurs before police rescued her and arrested four accused.

The woman, M. Chithiravalli, belongs to the Most Backward Class (MBC) community, while her husband, P. Ajith Kumar, belongs to the Scheduled Caste (SC) community.