A 12-year-old girl in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state died in a cyclone after she was expelled to a decrepit thatched outhouse behind her home because she was menstruating, local media reported.

The News Minute website reported that Vijaya, from Anaikkadu village in the state's Thanjavur district, was killed on November 16 after a coconut tree uprooted by Cyclone Gaja fell onto the flimsy hut to which she had been banished by her family.

Officials from the region said that locals follow the archaic tradition of expelling all girls attaining puberty from their homes for 16 days.

The news site reported that the teenager’s mother who was sleeping with the menstruating Vijaya when the cyclone made landfall, was injured in the accident. She has been admitted to hospital in the district, which lies some 200 miles south of the state capital, Chennai.

The cyclone claimed 45 other lives in the coastal state, officials said.

“When a girl comes of age, her family asks her to stay separately in a hut for some time,” local police chief Ganesh Moorthy told News Minute.

She is allowed back inside the house only after certain rituals connected with menstruation have been completed, he added.