According to the story, at this time, in the early years of the 19th century, a breast tax was imposed by landowning upper class on lower caste women if they wanted to cover their breasts in public. And the women in this story, she refused to both uncover her bosom and pay the breast tax.
When the village head, came to her home repeatedly asking her to pay tax, she became frustrated at the unjustness of her harassment. To make her protest known, she chopped off her breasts and presented them to him in a plantain leaf. She died the same day from loss of blood.
Later, her husband seeing her mutilated body, overcome by grief, jumped into her funeral pyre committing suicide. Following her death, a series of people's movements were set off and the breast tax system was ultimately annulled in that village.
