Nilanjana Bose & Hemangini Gupta / CNN-IBN

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It's a well-known fact, but one that everyone ignores - India doesn't like its girls. And it's a fact that the world has now started noticing.

Lancet, a British medical journal, published the findings of a team of scientists which analysed female fertility figures from a national survey of 6 million people in India. Alarmingly, there were about 0.5 million fewer girls born in the country in 1997 than expected.

The Lancet report states that half-a-million female foetuses are aborted every year in India.

Dr Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, says, that "prenatal sex determination and selective abortion" account for the half-a-million missing girls yearly.

He adds, in the past two decades access to ultrasound has become widespread and since then "a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable".

The figures support estimates by the Indian Medical Association, which has said five million female foetuses are killed in India each year.

The scientists said selective abortion of female foetuses is the most plausible explanation for the skewed sex ratio. The figures support estimates by the Indian Medical Association.

The study may have sent shock waves through the medical community abroad but doctors in India are not surprised.

Every year one in 25 female foetuses are aborted. This despite the fact that female foeticide is a criminal offense.

"This just the tip of the iceberg, the situation is much worse. More and more people today can afford an ultrasound and also to pay for the abortion of a girl child. It's a mass crime perpetuated by the medical community," says Puneet Bedi, a Specialist in fetal medicine.

According to the 2001 census India's age old fascination with the boy child has brought the census figures crashing to 933 girls per 1000 boys. Doctors estimate that almost a quarter million female foetuses are killed every year.

Photojournalist Ruhani Kaur, who has travelled across India on the female foeticide trail has shocking stories shot on celluloid. One of the shots depicts a woman who swallowed pills prescribed by a quack to have a boy child. Instead she gave birth to this deformed baby.

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