The High Court of Mumbai, India, on Monday (4) reported that children were crossing a river carrying venomous snakes to go to school. Cases have been reported in Bhiv Dhanor, Aurangabad district. Toddlers have to use Thermocol rafts to navigate the snake-infested waters and learn.

To learn, children have to pass through an area infested with snakes. Photo: Reproduction/Republicworld/ND.

A report submitted to the court says that 15 children from the village of Bhiv Dhanora in the Aurangabad district go to school sitting on thick sheets and travel daily through the Jaikwadi Dam reservoir. The place was taken over by giant and poisonous snakes.

The father of one of the children told the Times newspaper that the situation was terrified by snakes.

“I don’t want my children to be illiterate like me. So my daughter and son go to school on a Thermocol sheet.

The Court noted that this situation has remained unchanged for the past 47 years since the construction of the dam.

Lawyer Pushkar Shendurnikar is preparing a petition to the government asking for more access to safe education for children on site.

This is the second time such reports have reached the Bombay High Court.

In January 2022, the main collegium of the Supreme Court learned that young people from the village of Khirkhandi in the Satar region were sailing alone in a boat through the reservoir of the Koyna dam to get to school.