HIV affected family spends 20 days on railway platform

Jodhpur: Evicted out of their home, miseries of a HIV-affected family did not end with their finding of a new house in a locality in Jodhpur as their neighbours, following discovery of their disease, beat them up and threw them out of the area.

The family of six, including four children, was forced out of their home by their family members on November 6 after an NGO worker allegedly made it public to the neighbours that four of them were HIV positive.

The pregnant wife of the head of the family suffered injuries after allegedly being thrashed by the neighbours, a senior district official said. She was admitted to Umaid hospital in Jodhpur.

After the woman was discharged, the family wandered on the roads before making a railway platform their home for over 20 days, the official said.

They were later spotted by a local NGO Jodhpur Network of People Living with AIDS and were rehabilitated on Friday.

"We initiated the efforts to rehabilitate them and brought the matter to the notice of the administration," told Dinesh Joshi of the NGO.

"We sent official from Social Welfare department along with the police and resettled them in their house. Apart from this, we also ensured preventive action by the police against those, who had thwarted them out of the locality," said district collector Gaurav Goyal.

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