In what can be considered a tragic mystery, a bypass road on the highway 44 by the village of in Peddakunta Thanda in Mahabubnagar, Telangana, has so far killed nearly 80 men, all of them in road accidents. A gruesome truth of this tragedy is that the oldest male in the entire village is a 6-year old boy.
The bypass road which connected the Thanda villagers to Nandigana, a nearby panchayat, was built in 2006, from which the accidents started taking place. The huge panic that these mysterious accidents created among the widows and the families of the killed is such that they all have sent their male children to nearby village hostels with a hope that at least that will survive of not raised in their village.
The consequences of these accidents are so grave that several families have already vacated the village, while the young and middleclass widows have been facing sleazy sexual advances from the men from nearby villages. The widows are even dreading to cross the bypass at least twice a month to go to the nearby Panchayat to take their monthly pension being offered to them by the government.