Disabled citizens hold a dharna in Patna on Wednesday.Patna: A number of disabled men and women, under the banner of Indian Disabled Association in Patna on Wednesday, staged a dharna at the Kargil Chowk to draw attention to their plights that, they said, was worse than most people imagined.

"We are forced to live our lives with a constant sense of guilt and serious psychological complexes. Our society looks down upon us as if we are some sort of freaks of the nature. This affects a large number of people who are handicapped for one reason or other," said the coordinator of the event Mahesh Kumar Singh.

Asking the government to make provisions for mental evaluation and psychological counseling for the handicaps, Singh said that the society must stop discriminating against physically-challenged citizens who are as productive, sometimes even more, than their healthy counterparts.

Delegates from Gopalganj, Aurangabad, and Jehanabad also appealed to the government for its intervention in rehabilitating handicapped citizens.