Out of a thousand-odd cases filed against illegal gender tests, only 83 have found doctors guilty. Shonali Ghosal reportsSilent law Illegal sex detemination tests thrive while the girl child bears the bruntPhoto: AFPNOT A second daughter,” was Jaya Prasad’s reaction when the midwife predicted a baby girl just by looking at his wife Guddi Devi’s gait. He wanted a sex determination test to confirm the gender of the yet-to-beborn child. Suddenly, Devi felt as if she’d become one of the women she’d been seeking out near her village in Morena, Madhya Pradesh, for the last three years, to save female foetuses.Number of ConvictionsDelhi 4Punjab 23Haryana 29Chandigarh 1 Rajasthan 4 Gujarat 4 Maharashtra 18Total number of convictions under the PNDT Act till September 2011 (* The remaining 28 states and union territories had either zero convictions or zero cases)ALSO READ This is no way to boost our poor sex ratioKashmir too ditches its...
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NEW DELHI, India, December 14, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A woman who says she was pressured, even to the point of torture, by her husband and in-laws to abort her twin daughters, has taken her grievance to India’s legal system, filing a complaint against her relatives and giving a face to the victims of India’s epidemic of sex-selective abortions in the process.“Female foeticide is a thriving industry in India,” writes Mitu Khurana, whose story has attracted widespread media attention, on her blog. “The practice is rampant. Private clinics with ultrasound machines and other latest technologies are doing brisk business, making a complete mockery of law. Everywhere, people are paying to know the sex of an unborn child and paying more to abort the female child. The technology has even reached remote areas through facilities like mobile clinics.”Mitu Khurana with her twin daughters.When Mitu, 34, a pediatrician by trade, became pregnant with twins in January of 2005,...
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Mitu Khurana is a doctor by profession and is also an activist by choice. But many know her as a mother who has tirelessly fought for the survival of her two daughters. Post marriage, Dr. Mitu Khurana’s life came to a halt when her in-laws constantly harassed her for dowry. Later on, Mitu’s in-laws in connivance with her husband who also is a doctor demanded that Mitu abort the two female fetuses that she was carrying. Mitu’s husband and her in-laws ruthlessly and relentlessly compelled Mitu to either kill her unborn babies or put them for adoption. During pregnancy, Mitu had been constantly victimized and terrorized to change her decision of bearing her two little daughters. After invariable humiliation, physical abuse, and debasement of her dignity, Dr. Mitu Khurana went public about her atrocities. She filed a case against her husband and in-laws under the PC-PNDT (Pre Conception & Pre natal Diagnostic Technique) act. Since then, Mitu Khurana’s case has glared much...
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Six months ago, I traveled to India to see firsthand what the prime minister of that country calls a national shame. It is the systematic, widespread,shocking elimination of India’s baby girls. Some 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month in India. Baby girls are often killed at birth, either thrown into rivers, or left to die in garbage dumps. Its estimated that one million girls in India “disappear” every year.I traveled first to Delhi, where I met a woman who is a member of the privileged, educated class. Her name is Mitu and she is a pediatrician, married to a doctor. When she became pregnant, she said her husband’s family pressured her to have an illegal ultrasound to see if her twins were girls or boys. There are clinics everywhere in India, offering ultrasounds. We walked down street after street and saw signs everywhere advertising ultrasound services. There are even technicians who...
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By ALAN B. GOLDBERG and SEAN DOOLDec. 9, 201It is a country with a female president and where men revere female goddesses. And yet, India is far from a haven for women.According to current estimates, Indian men outnumber women by nearly 40 million. That startling gender gap, activists say, is the result of gendercide. Nearly 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month and untold numbers of baby girls are abandoned or murdered."It's the obliteration of a whole class, race, of human beings. It's half the population of India," said women's rights activist Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap Women Worldwide.Why is there such deadly discrimination against girls? Part of the answer is money. Girls are a financial burden to their parents, who must pay expensive dowries to marry them off. The dowry is a cultural tradition and the single biggest reason Indians prefer boys.When an Indian woman gives birth to a baby boy, it is an occasion for jubilation, said women's rights activist Gita...
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