Girls pay the price of being born a girl in terms of life

NI Wire

Bhubaneswar

Mon, 23 Jul 2007: 

July 23: Once again they paid the price of being born a girl in India and were inflicted violence before they could come to this world. In utter defiance of e constitution they were robbed of their right to life before they could bloom into full-fledged life.

Reference is to new finding in Orissa where police recovered 23 foetuses on Sunday from Nayagarh district of Orissa just at the distance of 100 km from the capital. Police doubt them to be of females just 6 to 8 months old.

Police became active after seven foetuses were discovered by a boy looking for the waste bottles inside a cave at Pratapgarh near Duburi in the same district. Consequent of the finding, chief minister Naveen Patnaik ordered a Crime branch probe after the agitation of local people and child rights organizations.

A local police and a team of Crime Branch discovered the skulls, bones and limbs of 30 foetuses packed in polythene bags from a well, used as a dumping place for the medicinal waste from the premises of a nursing home near Nayagarh, Orissa. All the bags have been sent for chemical examination said Rajesh Kumar, S P of the area.

All foetuses are believed to be of baby girls though the report of the forensic examination is awaited. The manager and another employee of the Krishna nursing home where the polythene bags containing the body parts of infants were recovered have been arrested, told a senior police official.

One is to be awaken to the fact that Nayagarh has one of the worst sex-ratio of the state having just 901 females over 1000 males. More depressing are the figures in sex ratio of 0-6 age group.

The Crime Branch raided various other private nursing homes and ultra-sound clinics of the city on Sunday following an order of the chief minister.

State president, AIDWA told that out of 12 nursing homes running having the facility of sex-determination in the city, only one has license. “This clearly indicates a deep-rooted nexus among police, administration, health officials and doctors”, says Tapasi Praharaj.

After the revelation of heinous act, Chief Minister of Orissa assured that those guilty will be punished and stringent measures will be taken to stop this.

Female foeticide though banned yet prevails even after the existence of strong laws to prevent it. The incident is just another indication of the status of women in Indian society.