Nagpur- Tribal girls studying in government hostels in Maharashtra told Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder and national convenor Abhijeet Dipke that they are made to undergo pregnancy tests at the time of admission and again when they return from holidays, a practice they described as humiliation, and one that is not written into the state’s hostel health rules.
The accounts were shared during Dipke’s interaction with tribal students in Nagpur on Wednesday, the same day CJP announced its “Adivasi School Thik Karo” campaign after Maharashtra’s own Tribal Development Department disclosed that 584 students had died in government-run and government-aided ashram schools over two years, nearly one child a day.
Dipke was accompanied at the Nagpur press conference by Ajinkya Shinde, CJP national organisation in-charge, and Akshay Shinde, joint secretary. His programme also included meetings with CJP volunteers and interactions with tribal students and MPSC aspirants.
In a video released from the Nagpur interaction, Dipke asked why tribal girls in hostels were being subjected to pregnancy tests. Students present said the test was demanded when they first took admission, and again when they returned after a holiday of about a month.
A student said on the camera she was asked to undergo a pregnancy check-up when she was admitted to a hostel in Wardha, and that such checks continue when students return from their villages after holidays.
The same students described overcrowding. One account put 20–25 girls in a single room. Another said a hostel housing about 125–150 students had only two or three washrooms. On-screen captions in CJP’s video put the figure at three washrooms for 120 girls.
Dipke asked whether ministers and MLAs would accept the same conditions or the same medical procedure for their own daughters.
CJP’s official handle posted the video with the line: “What ‘Nari Shakti’ are we talking about when our tribal women have to go through this? These are the conditions in hostels meant specifically for the tribal community.”
The allegation has been on record in Maharashtra for months.
In August, tribal student Nisha Sable told the Congress “Chhatron ki Goonj” event in Pune that girls returning from vacation to tribal hostels were being forced to take pregnancy tests. Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi then wrote to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, saying he was “shocked to learn that female students returning after an extended absence must undergo pregnancy tests and a range of other medical tests, to prove their ‘fitness’.” Gandhi called it a humiliation that “presumes them guilty” and “an attack on their dignity and their humanity.”
The documentary record on who ordered the tests remains thin. Government rules on health examinations for hostel students do not prescribe a pregnancy test. Local tribal development authorities have denied issuing a written order.
What is on record is this: after Maharashtra State Women’s Commission chairperson Rupali Chakankar visited the Wakad tribal girls’ hostel in Pune, Pune district civil surgeon Dr Nagnath Yempalle told The Times of India that medical personnel had been orally instructed to conduct pregnancy tests when girls returned from vacation. He said teams either receive students at the start of the academic year or go to the hostel to conduct tests, including pregnancy tests, “for their safety,” and that the same is done when a girl returns after a long leave of two or three months.
Tribal Welfare Commissioner Leena Bansod ordered a probe, calling it “a matter of great concern.” The Women’s Commission said action would be taken against hostel authorities and medical officers found guilty. An earlier inquiry by an Integrated Tribal Development project officer in August 2025 had reported no evidence of urine pregnancy tests before admission at one Pune hostel and noted there was no government order mandating them. The later civil-surgeon statement is the clearest official acknowledgment that the tests have been carried out on oral instruction.
BBC Hindi, reporting earlier student accounts from a Pune government tribal hostel, quoted girls as saying they had to buy a pregnancy kit and that a negative result was required before they were allowed to stay. The commissioner had then also said such a test should not be conducted.
As of Dipke’s Nagpur interaction on 16 September 2026, students from Vidarbha hostels, including Wardha, were still describing the same practice.
The pregnancy-test accounts landed on the same day CJP tied hostel humiliation to a larger record of deaths and neglect in tribal residential schooling.
On 14 August 2026, a senior official of Maharashtra’s Tribal Development Department told PTI that 584 students enrolled in residential schools had died over two years, 384 in government ashram schools and 200 in aided schools. The department runs 500 government ashram schools and 513 aided ones.
The official breakup given then: 170 deaths in government ashram schools in 2024–25 and 214 in 2025–26; of those, 36 died on school premises and 348 at home. In aided schools, 81 died in 2024–25 and 119 the following year; 30 of those deaths were on campus and 170 at home. Officials listed causes as snakebite, sickle-cell disease, serious illness, accident and suicide.
A later TV9 Hindi compilation of the department’s figures listed 273 deaths from serious illness, 228 from accidents, 55 from hanging and 28 from snakebite.
Dipke, at the Nagpur press conference, put the Maharashtra toll at “more than 590” over two years. The department’s published figure remains 584.
The figure became public after three tribal girls died of snakebite at an aided ashram school hostel in Japtalai village, Dhanora taluka, Gadchiroli, around midnight on 9–10 August 2026.
Six girls were bitten while sleeping on the floor because of a shortage of cots. Three died: Deepika Lakda (Class VI), Sushmita Mandal (Class VIII) and Anu Koreti (Class II). Three others- Deepika Madavi, Kavita Kiranga and Samruddhi Naitam- were hospitalised. Samruddhi was later airlifted to Nagpur; contemporaneous reports said she remained critically ill.
District officials said no warden was present. One account from then tribal development minister Vijaykumar Gavit Uike said about 50 girls were sleeping on the floor that night. The National Human Rights Commission, taking suo motu cognisance on 14 August, cited media reports that 79 girls were packed into a single room in a hostel that had functioned for about 25 years without basic facilities. The NHRC called it a serious human-rights issue and directed the Maharashtra chief secretary to file a detailed report within two weeks, including the health status of the surviving girls.
Chief Minister Fadnavis ordered the school’s licence cancelled permanently and a wider audit of aided ashram schools. Five days before the deaths, on 5 August, the tribal development department had issued a government resolution entitling every student in its government hostels to a cot, mattress, blanket and pillow. The Japtalai school was an aided ashramshala, not one of those 490 government hostels, but the girls still had no beds.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Dipke said the deaths were not isolated accidents.
“The continuous neglect of our tribal and marginalized communities is a deep stain on our nation’s conscience,” he said. “When a tragedy occurs, the government tries to brush away the loss of human life with a minimal token amount or livestock. I ask today: If a sitting minister’s family suffered a similar loss, would a check for two lakh rupees or a goat be acceptable to them? Why is the price of a tribal child’s life considered so negligent in the eyes of the state?”
He has separately said that families in Rajasthan were given goats and that Madhya Pradesh paid ₹4 lakh in some cases , figures he presented as examples of how governments treat tribal deaths. Those compensation claims were stated by Dipke; they are not independently verified here.
Dipke also pointed to Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh, where he had visited affected Baiga and Gond villages days earlier.
“More than 30 children have died in Balaghat, yet the administration remains sound asleep,” he said in Nagpur. “These children are being denied the most basic human right: the right to live. They are dying from dirty drinking water and preventable food poisoning. Do they not belong to India? Our constitution guarantees them the exact same democratic rights and protections as the most privileged citizens, but they are left with zero medical care.”
What is independently on record from Balaghat is a cluster of child deaths since June 2026 in remote habitations of Birsa and nearby blocks. Media and political tallies have ranged from the high 20s to more than 35; Dipke, after his 13 September visit, said locals told him the official count of 36 understated the toll.
The Union health ministry has said there is no single cause: verbal autopsies and records point to measles, malaria, co-infection, respiratory distress, dehydration, malnutrition, anaemia and shock. Screening found thousands of children with severe acute malnutrition and diarrhoea. Ground reports have documented families drinking from drains and pits because taps run dirty or dry. Congress on 16 September demanded resignations and ₹1 crore compensation per family.
CJP argued that Maharashtra’s 584 deaths sit inside a longer, documented pattern.
A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, in its 2014 report on ashram schools in tribal areas, recorded that the old ashram-school scheme had not been implemented across all Tribal Sub-Plan areas, that overcrowding and sub-standard food were recurring problems, and that 793 children had died in Maharashtra ashram schools between 2001–02 and 2012–13 from snake and scorpion bites and minor illnesses. The committee also noted limited data and delayed construction.
On the newer Eklavya Model Residential School (EMRS) scheme, CJP cited figures used in Parliament and by the Standing Committee: 720 schools approved, 477 functional at the time of the committee’s 2025 stock-taking, with a large share of the approved budget unspent in some years and thousands of sanctioned teaching posts filled only in phases. Later official replies in 2026 put sanctioned EMRSs at 723 and functional schools at 499 as of 1 January 2026; a subsequent PIB note has put functional schools higher still. CJP’s campaign text used the committee-era 477-of-720 figure and said the ministry spent barely three-quarters of its approved EMRS budget in the year under review, while sanctioned posts stayed vacant.
Dipke said only 340 of the functional EMRSs had permanent buildings in the data CJP presented, and that many tribal residential schools still run from rented premises. “Political parties build their party headquarters in every district by spending crores of rupees, but they don’t have funds to give to tribal residential schools that are mostly operated from rented properties,” he said.
He also said Scheduled Tribe students remain a small share of higher-education enrolment and that IIT admissions from the community remain low, a disparity he called discrimination. Those higher-education numbers were stated by Dipke at the briefing.
On the same Nagpur visit, Dipke publicly tore a copy of the Tribal Development Department’s management contract with the Laxman Mankar Trust for 490 tribal hostels and demanded the agreement be cancelled, according to Loksatta. Students in the state had already been protesting hostel rules, age caps and privatisation of management through August.
CJP said it wants:
an independent, non-departmental audit of every tribal residential school in India within three months, with results made public;
mandatory state-wise disclosure of a decade of student deaths in ashram schools and EMRS;
a public dashboard of sanctioned versus functional school status nationwide;
full utilisation of the EMRS budget before any new school is sanctioned.
Citizens have been asked to report conditions at the nearest tribal residential school on school-thik-karo.com/adivasi.
The party said the Adivasi School Thik Karo drive is an extension of its School Thik Karo campaign launched on 15 August. Field inspections were to begin from Gadchiroli on 17 September, then move to other tribal districts in Maharashtra and later to states including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha.
“Schools in tribal regions across India have been neglected by all governments in the last 80 years,” Dipke said. “We don’t want to target anyone. Our agenda is that schools for these tribal students should be improved.”
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