Rajbiraj, December 28

After losing her breadwinner son in the Madhes agitation last year, Shantidevi Mehata of Rajbiraj Municipality-9, Saptari, is struggling to run her family and it has become equally difficult for her to provide education to her youngest son.

Shantidevi’s second son Sanjan Mehata, 25, died in police firing during the agitation against CPN-UML’s programme in Maleth last year.

“After the eldest son started living on his own, he (Sanjan) was looking after us and the education of his brother, but ever since his death, we are left to fend for ourselves,” she lamented.

“We’ve just got five kattha land of which I have already sold three kattha for the education of the youngest son. I don’t know how we will survive in the coming days,” she bemoaned.

A total of five persons including Sanjan had died in the Maleth incident on March 6. Sanjan, who had gone for foreign employment, had returned home six months before the incident. In the wake of his death, his wife Sabita is staying with her parents leaving her in-laws.