Desire for boys, technology spell doom for girl child

DASTARDLY ACT: Many clinics in Haryana and Punjab conduct sex-determination tests.

    

Featured Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai

Maharaj or Dada, Ganguly's legacy lives on

Featured Slideshows

New Delhi: It is terrible to be born as a girl especially in Haryana. Girls are not wanted in the state anymore. So there is female foeticide and there are forced marriages.

It is a vicious cycle with one act of crime leading to another.

Sukhjeet is knitting a bright yellow pullover for her baby boy. She gave birth to the boy after she had aborted four girls and she has no regrets.

"Char bache hain aur char ladkiyon ka abortion karwaya hai. Agar nahi karwaya hota to che kudiyan hoti phir kaise byah karati unki? (I aborted four girl child. If I had not done so, I would have had six girls. How would have we got them married?)" she asks.

Sukhjeet's paid Rs 5,000 to kill each of her four unborn girls. Women from Fathehabad, a small village in Haryana, have been travelling all the way to Mansa in Punjab to get rid of their yet-to-be born daughters.

With their ultra-sounds in place, the next stop for a pregnant woman is a nondescript clinic offering no-questions asked abortion.

"Uterus ke andar se hi auzaraon se pehle kaatein hain. kaatke phir jaise bahar nikalte hain (We use some instruments to kill the foetus inside the uterus and then take it out)," explains Dr Ranmat, owner of a clinic.

"Jaise injection ya medicine aate hain medical hall se who maximum Rs 100 ya Rs 150 aur tablet who Rs 250 rupees ke kareeb hai. Bas itne ke aas paas kharcha aa jata hai (The injection and medicines come from a pharmacy shop. The injection costs about Rs 100-150 and the medicine about Rs 250. This is the total cost)," he says.

It is not just Haryana as for the last decade statistics across the country are appalling.

"We have more than 80 lakh girls eliminated in the last 10-15 years. We have about over 30,000 registered clinic and a significant number of them are involved in the crime of sex determination. For the medical profession this is a huge business and they making more than Rs 1000 crore every year," a social activist, Sabu George, says.

For many clinics, sex-selective abortion is all in a days work. This despite the fact that female foeticide is a criminal offence.

When Dr Rammat is asked what happens to the foetus, he nonchalantly replies that they throw it away.

"Aur toh koi tareeka nahi hai isse khatam karne ka. Kahi na kahi toh fekenge (There is no other way. We have to throw it somewhere)," he says.

In India, the Pre-Conception Pre-Natal Diagnostic Test (PCPNDT) Act conceived way back in 1994 to makes sex-determination based abortion illegal is clearly not a deterrent for these clinics mushrooming in Haryana.

The Minister for Woman and Child Welfare, Renuka Chowdhury, admits the law is not as effective.

"Yes it needs certain amendments. Like appropriate authority was defined as the doctors, obviously they are not going to tell on each other. So we are changing that concept and looking at other issues," Chowdhury says.