A 43-year-old man was arrested today by the police in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India, on charges of attempted murder, for gutting, with a knife, the belly of his wife, four months pregnant.
According to the media, the fetus was stillborn, while the woman, abandoned at home in a pool of blood, is in a reserved prognosis in a hospital in Delhi, where she underwent an emergency operation.
Her family members reported to the police that her husband allegedly attacked her at the instigation of a village priest, to find out the sex of the new child, the sixth after the birth of five girls.
The preference of Indians for sons is a tradition with deep socio-cultural roots, very difficult to eradicate. The killing of female babies, which follows, is still very common.
India has also made it illegal to have an ultrasound scan, which can reveal the sex of the baby, but in many clinics the test is still done.
According to a study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), published last June, nearly 46 million newborn girls have been eliminated in India in the past 50 years. It is estimated that every year nearly 460,000 newborns are killed by selective abortion or neglect and lack of care and food, immediately after birth. Despite repeated campaigns to eradicate this plague, while in 1961 there were 976 girls for every 1,000 boys in the seven-year-old age group, in 2011, according to the latest census, the figure dropped to 914 girls.
(Unioneonline/F)
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