MAHABUBNAGAR: There is a killer road in Telangana which connects India’s north and south. National Highway 44 is a road with a deadly reputation which has been blamed for the deaths of an alarming number of south Indian tribal villagers who live alongside it. One such village is Peddakunta, belonging to the Mahbubnagar district of Telangana, and lying adjacent to the highway bypass.  So far, it has turned a close-knit community of 35 families into a village of widows.  The village has a reputation of “village of highway widows.”

In the village of 35 huts and families, there is only one male adult. Thirty-seven others have died, and three have left the village for good. Thariya Korra, is the only man left alive, but lost his wife to the highway.

When the highway bypass was built nearly a decade ago, provisions to build a service lane were also passed. This would have allowed pedestrians a safe route to the other side of the road without them having to cross the bypass. But the service road never materialized, as a result, villagers are forced to walk across the four lanes of the highway bypass and January 2006 saw the start of a series of hit-and-run accidents on the bypass.

Till date, this stretch of road has claimed the lives of 80 people – 30 men from Peddakunta, two men from Banda Kunta and the rest from other nearby villagers.

“The village headquarters are on the other side of the highway. Everyone has to cross it to get any work with the government done – and many do not return. The most shocking death was a few months ago when a member of a nearby village went to the government office with a petition over the high number of deaths and died while returning,” says 65-year-old Mohammed Dastagir, who runs a paan-cigarette shop near the road leading to the village.

“I am not sure if my two children will be safe here,” said 39-year-old Korra Panni whose husband died after being hit by a speeding vehicle. “So I admitted them to the government hostels at Kothur and Shadnagar. My youngest child lives with me, but finding work is hard.” Panni’s husband was killed while crossing the road when he was returning from daily wage work at Shadnagar in August 2013.

Seven-year-old Anchan is one of only five village children who go to a nearby school. “We are afraid when they are late. We have had too much to mourn and nothing to celebrate,” his mother says.

The loss of its men has exposed the village to another threat: At night, strangers from neighboring areas knock on the doors of the widows, most of who are between 20 and 38 years of age. As a result, many of the women are forced into prostitution for money, and sometimes even for food.

“Some of us had to earn to keep ourselves and our children alive,” said another woman. “And the men wanting to spend a night know that they can come to us as long as they are willing to pay.”

Nenavath Rukya lost her husband, three sons and a son-in-law to the highway. Unable to fend off the attentions of unwanted men from nearby villages who were bothering her widowed daughters-in-law, she sent her back to her parent’s village. “To protect them from these men, I had to force them to return to their parents,” Rukya said.

“The gods have cursed us. No male in our village will live for long. The highway is just a vehicle carrying our fate,” she said.