Vellore: Remember Hanifa Zarai, the seven-year-old girl of Ambur about 50 km from here, who had hit news headlines across the globe after lodging police
complaint seeking the arrest of her father for going back on his promise to build a toilet at home? Well, now she’ll have her toilet and appa Esanullah does not have to go to jail.
Commercial Taxes Minister K C Veeramani on Saturday handed over to the class-2 girl the government sanction order for building a house-with toilet inside-under a special scheme of the State Slum Clearance Board. The happy event happened at Ambur in the course of the minister, along with another cabinet colleague Nilofer Kafil, distributing free gold thali to poor women. “I am happy, now we will have a complete house, with a toilet”, said the little girl, her face lighting up.
The day after Zarai lodged her complaint at the all-women police station at Ambur on December 10, the town municipality named her as its brand ambassador for the Swachh Bharat project of PM Narendra Modi. Flaunting all her class certificates and sports medals, to prove she was a serious and studious kid, she had then told the dazed sub-inspector A. Valarmathi that she wanted her father to be arrested because he had cheated her after promising two years ago he would build her a toilet inside the house.
“I am growing. I feel ashamed to go out and defecate in the open”, Zarai had told the woman cop who promptly reported to her higher officers and also called the sanitary officer to ask him to help the girl.
It was only after the sanitary officials promised to help her did Zarai give up her demand for appa’s arrest. Esanullah wasn’t upset with her for her arrest demand and had in fact told the media he was proud of his girl as she followed his advice to be bold and pursue good values. Now the man is even more happy because the little one has got the family its first concrete house, that too with a toilet.
