WHAT’S BEING CLAIMED:
- A man has been charged with attempted murder after he sliced his pregnant wife’s belly to check the gender of the baby.
- The father of five daughters, the man yearned for a son and was convinced by a priest that his wife is still carrying yet another baby girl.
- The wife survived and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy at the hospital.
In India, male children are preferred over female children. It is no wonder that it is also one of the highest female feticide rates in the world, according to a study on female infanticide by the Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights.
Sex-selective abortions are common.
This time in Budaun in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a desperate father of five daughters cut open his pregnant wife’s belly with a sickle to determine if he is going to have yet another daughter or a son.
According to a report by The Times of India, fortunately, the six or seven months pregnant 35-year-old woman and her unborn child survived the ordeal, upon undergoing surgery.
She was first taken to a hospital in Bareilly but due to her worsening condition she was transferred to a private hospital. But the hospital asked for a sizable deposit. With no deposit, the hospital would refuse her entry so the family had no choice but to rush her to a Delhi hospital.
The husband, known only as Pannalal, was egged on by a priest that his wife, Anita Devi, was having another daughter. Upon learning this, he convinced his wife to have an abortion but his wife refused and so he slit her stomach.
According to Ravi Kumar Singh, Devi’s brother, “When I reached there, I saw blood everywhere. Anita’s stomach was slit, and she told me that her husband did this. I took her to the hospital with the support of the police.”
Singh added, “My brother-in-law often used to beat my sister for giving birth to five daughters. Our parents had intervened on several occasions. But no one imagined that he would take such a cruel step.”
Pannalan has now been charged with attempted murder according to Police Superintendent Praveen Singh Chauhan.
Chauhan added that Anita later gave birth to a stillborn baby boy at the hospital.
Source: New York Post
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