Sania Khatun lived with her mother in a village north of Calcutta under a tarpaulin sheet provided by the state.
Sania normally ate nothing at school but on Friday saw classmates eating rice and asked for one rupee.
Her mother scolded her and when she returned from work found her daughter hanged from the ceiling with a sari.
“She wanted just one rupee… but her mother could not give her the money due to poverty,” government official Nakul Chandran Mahato told the Reuters agency.
