Tyre Used in Cremation of Jhalawar School Roof Collapse Victim Payal.

Rain battered Piplodi village as dawn broke on Saturday, but there would be no customary firewood on the ghats for young Payal. Hours after a crumbling government school in Jhalawar district claimed her life along with six classmates, a tyre smoldered at her cremation, a bleak substitute for wood ruined by relentless monsoon showers. Her grieving family gathered at Chandpura Bhilan, bearing the unbearable weight of loss, while locals improvised in the face of circumstances few could have foreseen.

The roof collapse, which struck without warning during the morning prayer assembly inside Piplodi Government Upper Primary School, transformed a place of learning to a scene of chaos. Payal, barely 13, was one of 28 children buried beneath slabs of stone and cascading bricks. Frantic voices, calls for help then silence as rescue teams, villagers, and authorities clawed through the rubble in heavy rain. Seven young lives, including Payal’s, did not survive.

Villagers say they had pleaded with authorities to repair the aging structure. Children had even warned teachers about falling gravel and cracks in the ceiling. Complaints reportedly went unheeded, leaving the building unlisted as hazardous even in recent surveys. On Friday, with rainwater pooled on the roof, the structure simply gave way.

The tragedy tore through the tight-knit village. Families wailed and officials arrived clutching expressions of condolence. State leaders, including Rajasthan’s chief minister and the president of India, pledged support. Opposition leaders accused the administration of negligence, foreshadowing protests that swiftly erupted across the area.

For Payal’s family, the government’s promises provided little consolation. Her uncle demanded that the administration fulfill its word compensation and, crucially, a government job for a bereaved family member. The state announced a payment of ₹10 lakh to families and a job for a relative, while suspending the headmaster and four teachers pending investigation.

Saturday’s funerals unfolded under a blanket of police supervision. The atmosphere pulsed with grief and anger. In Piplodi, six children were consigned to the flames side by side; siblings Meena and Kanha, just twelve and seven, shared a single pyre. Payal’s last rites took place in Chandpura Bhilan. There, with the downpour deluging even the final rituals, a tyre burned at the center of the family’s sorrow the only dry option amid sodden wood and soaked earth.

As smoke curled with the acrid tang of rubber, Payal’s departure exposed more than just a gap in one village’s future. It revealed a stark crisis roiling across Rajasthan’s rural schools over 900 buildings like Piplodi’s have fallen into disrepair. The district’s children, whose classroom transformed overnight into a crematorium, served as a chilling warning to a nation about the price of neglect, the cost of inaction, and the human toll, paid now in tears and the black smoke of a burning tyre.