Seven-year-old Anjali, a frail girl walking with a bucket of sewage and waste water for discharging it in an open field, is a pitiful sight. This has become the fate of several others at Bhagpati village and adjoining areas, where the residents have been forced to become a scavenger, flushing out dirty water four times a day. An epidemic threat looms over this village in the periphery of Karnal as every villager has been forced to be a scavenger in the absence of a drainage system. The villagers have dug kutcha drains outside their houses to collect the dirty water and constructed small bundhs to check seepage. Their morning starts with flushing the water from the drains and throwing it in an open field near the government primary school of the village. The area around the field stinks as all villagers use it for throwing the dirty water and diseases have become a synonym with the village, says Anita, who lives close to the field. “Our lives have become a living hell and living in such inhuman conditions has become our fate as no one is bothered about us,” she laments. This inhuman practice continues even after a ban on human scavenging. It is happening under the nose of the administration in spite of the fact that the village, with 700-odd voters, had been included in the Karnal Municipal Corporation. Not only men and women, but even children, who should be studying in school and carrying schoolbags, are seen carrying buckets filled with dirty water. Villagers have to walk in knee-deep water even for entering houses and the primary school is submerged in water. People want to keep the village clean, but are forced to defecate in the open as there is no sewerage, rue the villagers. In case they do not do so, they will be be required to clean human excreta with their hands, they add. The village, located in a low-lying area, is inundated during the rains as the drainage is above the village level and stagnant water causes water-borne diseases. Health officials admit that they have stopped the immunisation programme due to unhygienic conditions prevailing in the village as workers have refused to enter the village. Municipal councillor of the area Balvinder Singh says the villagers are leading a miserable life in the absence of a drainage system. An estimate of Rs 1.4 crore has been sent to the Deputy Commissioner for laying the drainage system to channelise the dirty water, but nothing has been done till date, he adds. “I have got streetlights installed with my money and the colony has been regularised a month back. The Public Health Department says sewerage cannot be laid as no land is available,” he says. Karnal Deputy Commissioner Vikas Yadav says: “It is a cause of concern and I will send a team to take stock of the situation.”