Couple forced to live in bathroom for one year!

• They live in a dingy bathroom of a relative's house.

A middle-aged couple in Karnataka, India, are forced to live in a bathroom for a year due to a delay in the allotment of house promised by the government.

Prior to their pitiable state, Obalappa, 55, and Lakshminarasamma, 45, were living in a mud house in a village in Tumakuru. In 2017, Kotagudda Gram Panchayat (village council) told the couple to demolish their mud house as a new house was sanctioned to them under B.R. Ambedkar Niwas Yojana.

Although work order on was issued in January 2018, and Rs 1.64 lakh ($2,000 approx) was to be released in three installments, the needy couple never received the money to build their house. In fact, hoping that construction of their house will start soon, they took loans from friends and relatives to lay the foundation and ran into debt. With nowhere to stay, they started living in a dingy bathroom of a relative's house.

The wife works as an agricultural labourer to make ends meet as well as bear medical expenses of her ailing husband. She said that she has to take money from her son, a vegetable vendor in Bengaluru when she has no work. "It is like living in a hell in this 4ft by 4ft bathroom. I am sick and I cannot sleep here properly," the ailing husband said.

However, authorities visited the couple on Saturday and informed that their case has been followed up and will are likely to get the money for their house in a week's time, according to reports in The Hindu.