A bride in India has ditched her groom to be the day before their wedding - because he did not have any toilets in his house.
The unnamed 25-year-old had agreed to marry the man in a match arranged by a local NGO in Lucknow in northern India on the condition a toilet was ready at his home by the date of the wedding - which was organised as part of a mass ceremony which took place on Sunday.
But the woman called off the ceremony when she discovered the toilet had not been built the day before the ceremony.
The woman’s family backed her decision and claimed the local police were contacted regarding the matter, but officers say they were not aware of a complaint.
After finding out why she rejected her groom, the NGO offered the woman another match with a man who already has an indoor toilet installed in his home, which she accepted, the Indian Express reports.
In 2014, The Economist reported that around 130 million Indian households do not have an indoor toilet, and of the estimated one billion people in the world who do not have access to proper sanitation, an estimated 600 million of them are from India.
According to the Right to Pee campaign, which was set up in 2011, in Mumbai there are 10,000 free or pay-to-use toilets, but only 37 per cent of them are open to women.
Many public toilets are free for men to use but women are often charged a “nominal” fee of one to five rupees because authorities claim women’s toilets require more water and resources because they need squat toilets and doors for privacy rather than a urinal.
In 2014, the then schools education minister, Vinod Tawde, expressed concern that many rural girls were dropping out of education because they did not have access to bathrooms during the day - causing bladder and kidney infections or dehydration if they avoid drinking water.
There have also been cases of women and girls being raped while using outdoor toilets.
