Last week, around 500 tribal people, all married men and women in their early 30s, from different villages in Munchingput and Pedabayalu of Alluri Sitharamaraju (ASR) district were transported in buses to a private hospital in Visakhapatnam city for family planning surgery.
This has raised doubts about the intent of the surgery among the tribal people, as they were reportedly promised ₹5,000 each on successful completion of the procedure, with a condition that they needed to stay under observation for 15 days.
“The family planning procedure is one of the simplest surgeries. They are performed in an hour these days and in most cases, the person is discharged in a day after the procedure. But in this case, the tribal people were told that they needed to be kept under observation for 15 days. This is very suspicious,” district convenor of Andhra Pradesh Adivasi Joint Action Committee Rama Rao Dora from Munchingput told The Hindu.
