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KATHMANDU - Nepal plans to investigate whether a centuries-old tradition of worshipping a virgin girl as a "living goddess", or Kumari, has violated the child's human rights.
The move comes after Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the Government to submit a detailed report within three months.
"Such a study will be good for the Kumari system," said Madhav Prasad Ghimire, the most senior bureaucrat in the Ministry of Culture.
Under a tradition followed for centuries in the Kathmandu valley, a girl as young as 4 from the Buddhist Shakya family is chosen through a rigorous religious process to serve as Kumari or the living goddess.
She has to leave her family and stay in a 15th-century temple in Kathmandu's Basantapur area.
Her divine status is retained until the girl starts menstruating, after which she goes back to her family and is replaced by a new child. Critics say the child is denied a normal life and the practice violates her fundamental human rights.
- REUTERS
