Bleeding in Silence: Restoring Menstrual Dignity Inside Moradabad District Prison

Donation drive in prison

In the District Jail of Moradabad, periods are not a monthly routine — they are a quiet crisis. The women here do not complain, but their bodies do. Many have just two or three pairs of clothes. When they get periods, there’s nothing to change into.

Most women sit for hours on the cement strip above the jail’s drain — not because they want to, but because that’s the only way to avoid staining what little they own. Others sleep inside the washroom, folded against the wall, to keep their bleeding unnoticed.

There is no dignity in it, but there is survival. In a place where time is frozen and shame is constant, menstruation becomes yet another thing to hide, endure, and forget.

When Dyvigya Care Wellness Foundation first entered this jail, we didn’t come to donate. We came to listen. To see. To understand. And what we saw was not just the lack of pads — it was the absence of care, of information, of dignity. Many women had never used a sanitary pad in their life. Some didn’t know what it was for. There were myths, fears, rashes that never healed. There was no conversation — just adjustment, pain, and silence.

So we began with what was most urgent: knowledge. We held sessions inside the jail on menstrual hygiene, personal cleanliness, and reproductive health. We spoke in plain words, in Hindi, with sensitivity and without shame. We demonstrated how infections spread when cloth is reused without drying, when hands are unwashed, when wounds are left unattended. We gave them facts — not fear — and tools to take care of themselves even within constraints.

Then came the next step — we arranged for round-the-year distribution of sanitary pads. Every menstruating woman now receives a regular supply, not just once in a while or in emergencies. Each packet is handed over with respect, never as charity. The women now line up, quietly but confidently, to collect what is theirs by right. They ask questions. They track their cycle. Some even remind others not to skip changing. The impact is not loud — but it is profound.

One woman folded her pad into her pallu and said, “This is the first time in years I’ve not bled through my clothes.” Another whispered, “When I go home, I will tell my daughter all this.” That is how change happens — not through announcements, but through quiet shifts in posture, in self-worth, in habit.

At Dyvigya Care Wellness Foundation, we believe menstrual dignity does not begin at home — it begins wherever a woman exists. In prisons, in villages, in anganwadis, in shelters. We don’t offer rescue. We offer restoration. Pads are not the solution — but they are the beginning. In the District Jail of Moradabad, that beginning has already taken root. And the women, who once sat in silence over a drain, now sit in circles — talking, learning, and choosing to care for themselves, even within the hardest walls.