Is being poor a crime?

Husband is wandering to India for work. On the ninth day after I gave birth, on 11 June 2081, the forest office indiscriminately ran a dozer and demolished our house. They did not give us any information before demolishing the house. They did not let us take away our household goods, clothes, children's books and medicine.

For a month, we landless people have been living under a hundred family tents. There is nothing to eat at home. We are repeatedly told to leave this place, but no one shows us where to go. We do not know the law, but we heard rumors everywhere that it is written in the country's constitution to give land to landless Dalits like us for housing and farming. Leaders have said that they will give land immediately even in elections.

The land commission had given us a certificate of landlessness and hoped to give us land, but why, we were suddenly evicted in Barkhamas. We love the forest around us, the trees, the animals, the water sources and this land like our own children. We have been protecting everything but our sisters, mothers are caught as forest encroachers, taken to jail and given many hardships. They put a wire fence on the walking path. We are not able to understand why they are treating us so inhumanly in our own state. Is it a crime to be poor and not have our own land?

When it rains, it drowns in floods and makes a mess, when the sun shines, the scorching heat seems to take your breath away. I have a one-month-old baby and a hundred-year-old girl in the rain, what will be the situation? Can you feel it? Day after day they show threats and fear. The forest office has again given us a 5-day ultimatum and is pressuring us to leave the same place where we have pitched our tent. Please let the government show us where to go, or arrange for us to stay safely in this place.
– Vasanthi Sarki, Bhajani, Kailali