Girl hangs self over Re1

MALDA: A 12-year-old girl hanged herself after being told by her 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 over the telephone 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 government of West Bengal which supplied them food rations.