In India, all women must confront the cultural pressure to bear a son. The consequences of this preference is a disregard for the lives of women and girls. From birth until death they face a constant threat of violence. See the project at http://mediastorm.com/publication/undesired
By Shreeya Sinha/MediaStorm
Pictures by Walter Astrada/Alexia Foundation
The United Nations reports that at least 40 million women in India have died from neglect or were simply never born in the first place. Dr. Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate, first applied the term "missing" to this phenomenon in 1986 when he examined India's census data. Among Christians and Muslims, the female to male sex ratios were close to normal. Among Hindus, who make up 80 percent of India's population, the gender imbalance would spark a demographic crisis.
Every day 7,000 female fetuses are aborted in India.
— U.N.
Until the 1980s, when ultrasound machines became more widespread, girls were commonly killed at birth or were neglected of health and nutrition to ensure their death. Baby girls were left in dumpsters, buried in clay pots or poisoned. Shocking, yes, but the practice still continues. Across the country there is a 47 percent excess female child mortality, girls aged 1-to-4 who are dying before their life expectancy because of discrimination. In the north, specifically the wealthy state of Punjab and neighboring Haryana, the excess female child mortality is 81 and 135 percent respectively, according to India's National Family Health Survey.
SALEM, INDIA - Priya, 4 years old, lives in the Life Line Trust Home. She was taken by the
police after neighbors denounced her parents for beating her and burning her face.
The Indian government has set up a network of "cradle houses" for unwanted baby girls.
The arrival of ultrasound machines, and its subsequent exploitation, ushered in a silent era of organized crime. Now able to identify the sex of a fetus early in pregnancy, parents who learn their child is a girl often abort her. The government has banned abortions based on gender for the last 16 years. Every ultrasound clinic is required to have a poster explaining the law, yet this $250 million business a year flourishes because of deeply entrenched traditions, official apathy and the lucrative business of illegal ultrasounds.
The role of women in India, a nation which set a global precedent for women by electing Indira Gandhi as prime minister in 1966 and reserves a 33 percent quota for women in village elections, emphasizes the terrible paradox of Indian culture. In 2001, 54 percent of adult women were literate according to India's 2001 Census. The country's diversity exacerbates the issue, and divisions by ethnicity, class, creed and culture complicate efforts to advance social justice. Yet no matter their "station" in life, all women confront the cultural pressure to bear a son.
“No matter what a girl does, her life is always going to be bad.”
— Sukhwanti
Boys represent a status symbol. As breadwinners, they will look after their parents, perform their last funeral rites and carry on the family name. Many regard girls as a financial drain because parents face the pressure to provide a dowry to marry her off. In rural areas, livestock, furniture and elegant garments comprise the dowry, while in urban areas, a groom's family expects cash, jewelery, cars, property and lavish weddings.
Ruchira Gupta-Apne Aap
“They feel a daughter will be taking some money out of the family whereas a son will be bringing in money into the family,” says Ruchira Gupta, a journalist and founder of Apne Aap, an anti-sex trafficking organization.
Although the government banned dowry nearly 50 years ago, the law is mostly ignored.
JAIPUR, INDIA - Shahin, 13 years old, earns 50 rupees (US$ 1) per day, polishing semi-
precious stones. Most of the money goes toward helping her family save for her dowry and
wedding expenses.
The rise of consumerism and economic prosperity has expanded the middle class and increased dowry demands. An insufficient dowry exposes the bride to lethal perils:
“She's murdered by the boy's family so he can marry one more girl and bring in more dowry,” says Gupta.India's crime bureau statistics show one dowry death is reported every 77 minutes.
VARANASI, INDIA - Utma arrived at the hospital with severe burns to 100% of her body as
a result of being doused in kerosene and lit on fire — the penalty for her family's inability to
pay additional dowry demands.
Amongst the bamboo forests that skirt the foothills of the Himalayas, Maya and Raju Thapa, haggard and impoverished parents, recount their misfortune. They had four daughters, and despite taunts for not having sons, educated each of them. The eldest, Latika, completed her bachelor's degree before getting married.
“I just prayed to God that my girls would have no difficulties,” says Maya.
But the morning of Diwali, The Festival of Lights, Maya and Raju's spirits were forever broken. On October 17, 2009, Latika hung herself from a ceiling fan—according to the in-laws. Maya and Raju were stunned and they refused to believe it. The village and the police determined that her alcoholic husband had strangled her.
DEHRADUN, INDIA - Raju and Maya
Thapa mourn their daughter's death.
“We sold half our land and we gave them so many gifts. We didn't give a [refrigerator] but we gave everything else,” says Raju.
The police arrested Latika's husband for what they call "dowry death." But they released him within weeks and he continues to live his life unpunished for murdering his wife. He has left the 5 year-old girl he had with Latika with his relatives. Maya and Raju are desperate to bring home their granddaughter because they fear she could be the next victim, the last evidence that he ever married.
Maya and Raju don't have the money to go to court. Even if they did, they would face long odds: Indian courts rarely hand down convictions against husbands who murder wives, beset as they are by corruption, huge case back-loads and the same gender bias as Indian society at large.
On the outskirts of South Delhi, through a maze of ruptured sewage pipes, stray animals and ditches, is the home of Sukhwanti. The 27-year-old mother of a girl and three boys underwent sterilization, a one-time procedure to ensure she would not get pregnant — and have any more daughters. She believes the popular ‘80s slogans proclaiming that it's better to spend $100 to get rid of a girl now then spend $1,000 on her dowry later.
“One daughter is enough. Don't need anymore daughters,” she says.
NAJAFGARH, INDIA - Sukhwanti,
27, sits with her daughter.
Sukhwanti is one of many women in the village who must prostitute herself 10 to 15 times a week to pay back the dowry loaned for her marriage, feed her children, and to earn enough to pay for her daughter's dowry. While she says she will not prostitute her daughter, Sukhwanti admits that daughters become the first resource in poverty.
But income disparities alone fail to explain the preference for sons. Prosperous states like Punjab suffer the worst sex ratios. In 2008, a joint study by the development group ActionAid and Canada's International Development Research Centre revealed that higher caste families in Punjab produce just 300 girls for every 1,000 boys. (The natural rate would suggest 950 girls). Thus, this region of relative education and privilege had at least twice as many "missing" girls than in poorer regions.
Kanta Singh-Women Power Connect
Dr. Mitu Khurana plays with Pari,
one of her twin daughters.
Skewed gender demographics is not a problem of the poor, says Kanta Singh, a policy coordinator at the lobbying group Women Power Connect. "The tribal belts in the country are still having good sex ratios. The poor slums still have good sex ratios," she says.
In a West Delhi apartment, above a pale gray clinic run by her parents, Dr. Mitu Khurana impatiently waits for justice. Five years ago, she filed a case against her husband, also a doctor, and his parents for dowry harassment, illegally determining the sex of her twins, harassing her to abort them because they were girls and then attempting to murder them.
The mother of the 5-year-old twins is the first woman in New Delhi to file a complaint under India’s PCPNDT Act, which bans sex determination tests.
“This is the worst form of genocide where you're killing 50 percent of the population,” she says.
Her story has sent alarm bells ringing across the nation, upending conventional wisdom in India that gender-based abortions are primarily a problem of the illiterate and poor.
Yet this educated, wealthy woman has faced discrimination. She's had to fight ingrained cultural biases to get her case heard with the police, government and the courts.
“An independent woman is considered bad and a dependent woman is considered good.”
— Ruchira Gupta
“I was told by a [government official] that, 'What's the problem if your husband wants a son? You are young, you can again get pregnant.' [The official] said 'I'm giving you a fatherly advice.' So I asked him, 'Sir what do you mean by a fatherly advice? Does this mean that in the next pregnancy you're asking me to go for a sex determination test? Or you mean to say that we women are just machines and we should go on producing children until we get a son?'” “[Officialdom] see a woman who is coming to fight against her husband and in-laws as somebody who is doing something which is a sin,” she says.
Traditionally, once a woman leaves her father's house, the husband assumes responsibility and property rights over her. This leads parents to marry girls off early —before developing her own personal will. Girls are taught to suppress their identity and opinions to cater to their new family.
Women's rights activist Ruchira Gupta says such attitudes have been passed down from generation-to-generation, permeating into the very support systems that are meant to help women.
“An independent woman is considered bad and a dependent woman is considered good.”
As a result, so few women stand up for themselves because they don't know where to turn. Even if they speak out, men rarely get blamed and if a woman has no financial means, she cannot survive on her own.
BHUTTA, INDIA - A woman cleans the street as her husband and son look on.
Dr. Mitu Khurana, the twins' mother, acknowledges that she's fortunate to have supportive parents. Her father has doubled his work hours to support her and her daughters. They've given her the courage to continue.
“If all this can happen with an educated woman like me, what is the guarantee my future generations, my daughters, will not face the same harassment when they grow up?” she asks.
If avoiding the burdens of dowry fuel one side of this "gendercide," then profit among unscrupulous medics fuels the other. A minority of doctors, medical technicians and managers of portable ultrasound clinics know disclosing the sex of the baby to parents is illegal and that abortions based on gender are too, but they continue unabated.
MORENA, INDIA - A doctor performs an ultrasound examination at a medical clinic in
Morena.
Out of a meagre 400 cases filed against these medics, less than a handful have been convicted for performing gender-based abortions.
These disappearing daughters can be saved if the government is more vigilant about controlling those profiting off of cultural pressures and if the government makes women's rights a focus of development.
Dr. B.S.Dahiya, a former Director General of Health Services in the state of Haryana, decided to take action.
Dr.B.S. Dahiya-former Health Dept.
of Haryana
Hailed the “crusader of the girl child,” the senior medical officer implemented the law which bans sex determination tests in Haryana, a state with the second lowest male to female sex ratio. Employing pregnant women as decoys, he ran a sting operation on doctors suspected of disclosing the sex of fetuses. Once he gathered enough evidence, he had them arrested.
“This is noble profession and [doctors] should not work as demons in white coats,” he says.
Dr. Dahiya believes at least 30 percent of all pregnancies in the country have undergone an illegal sex determination test.
“If a person is murdered you have a case launched in court,” the doctor says. “Here she's already dead and nobody is there to look after her, even as a legacy.”
In 2006, after waiting six years for a decision, Dr. Dahiya won the first conviction of a doctor in India. The sentence was two years in jail and a $108 fine.
The law, he says, is a blunt instrument that is not suitable to the magnitude of the problem.
“States and the union territories authorities did not take any interest to implement the law.”
Slogans read: Vote for us and we'll find you a wife.
But Dr. Dahiya did. Between 2001 and 2005, doctors feared his strategy so much that the male-to-female sex ratio started to improve. It wasn't without a cost though. Medical lobby groups harassed Dr. Dahiya and his family, aided by government officials who had investments in the illegal world of sex-selective abortions.
“The things are happening right under their noses. Every appropriate authority knows where [illegal ultrasounds] are happening. That means it is consented,” he says.
The decline in India's gender ratio has steadily affected 80 percent of India’s states since 1991.
Having fewer women in the country have forced bachelors to look beyond their own culture and caste to seek brides from as far away as Nepal and Bangladesh. This causes its own set of challenges, including resentment among men in those countries at what they view as bridal tourism, and for the women, a pressure to adapt to different cultural, language, diet and social customs.
HARYANA, INDIA Suman, 19 years old, eats on the floor while her husband sits above.
Suman was forcibly brought to Madina by a trafficker and sold to her husband for 40 000
rupees (US$ 842) at the age of 17.
“They are brought in merely to produce another son,” says Kanta Singh, an advocate at a national women's lobby group.
The practice of wife-sharing has emerged also, with brothers often sharing the same wife.
HARYANA, INDIA - Shanti Devi, 60 years old, is surrounded by her sons’ wives. Ranjana,
on the left, is her daughter-in-law twice over; following the death of her first husband, the
eldest son, she was passed on to become the wife of the youngest son.
On the border of Nepal and India, a nexus of brothel owners and smugglers supply a growing demand. These syndicates purchase girls from Nepal and West Bengal and sell them in Indian regions with a scarcity of women.
Ruchira Gupta, whose film “Selling of Innocents” documents this sex trafficking, says she came upon clusters of villages in Nepal missing 15-to-45 year-old women who were sold in India.
In Haryana state, Singh says, “Each village you will go to, you will find 10, 15 women who are not from Haryana.”
Politicians feed on the problem. In an effort to garner votes, some local politicians in Haryana have pledged to find brides. Slogans read: Vote for us and we'll find you a wife.
What unites the women in this story—in spite of their regional, educational and income differences—is that all of them have endured the rigid, oppressive and dangerous cultural practices of Indian society.
PUNJAB, INDIA - A group of women sits idly in a "protection home" in Rothak (Haryana).
Many of the residents were rescued after being trafficked to be sold as wives or to work as
prostitutes.
Some traditionalists contend that fewer women in society will improve their status. But study after study, by the United Nations, independent NGOs and academic researchers, refute this concept.
Even in India’s increasingly modern capital, New Dehli, two in every three women faced sexual harassment in the last year, according to a U.N. and government backed survey.
In 2008, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, called for stricter enforcement of laws and made aplea to families.
“No nation, no society, no community can hold its head high and claim to be part of the civilized world if it condones the practice of discriminating against one half of humanity represented by women,” he declared.
Gupta adds, “The culture of domination replaces the culture of collaboration in society and that can lead to the stifling of ideas, creativity, entrepreneurship.”
In spite of the official rhetoric, what little progress that can be cited has originated at the grassroots—among concerned activists like Gupta, Dahiya and countless brave mothers, grandmothers and brides who seek justice against the odds.
So what can be done to accelerate change?
For its part, India's government now offers parents incentives to have girls. Girls get free education and cash stipends and “cradle homes” have been established to care for unwanted girls.
in Jalandhar where parents can leave unwanted baby girls.
But these government provisions address the symptoms of the cultural disease: the disease itself—the obsession with male children—remains as powerful as ever.
Technology may offer hope, too. Doctors in the state of Maharashtra have invested in a new technology called the “Silent Observer,” which records ultrasounds as evidence in cases where doctors are suspected of disclosing the sex of the child. If this technology deters parents and corrupt doctors in the state, it could be implemented across India.
Gupta says we can turn victims into survivors if we tell their stories internationally.
“Just as fear is contagious, courage is contagious and it can lead to big movements and the entire violence against women movement has to be based on us speaking up,” she says.
With the help of media, youth, celebrities, religious leaders, and community activists, a multi-pronged advocacy campaign could change mindsets, create government accountability and give women the strength to speak out.
Gupta also says society must also provide girls the freedom and possibility that education promises.
JAIPUR, INDIA - A group of children take classes in an exclusive government school for
child labourers.
“Nobody is thinking of the simpler solution. That she could also earn as much money as her brother if she was sent to school. And the school fees would cumulatively and including the college fees be less than the dowry that most people put into the marriage of a child.”
In order for these solutions to be effective, India must become more conscious of its cultural belief system. Beyond the human tragedy, this discrimination will stunt India's growth at precisely the moment in history when the nation is rising toward real global influence.
A mother’s plea: Dr. Mitu Khurana
by Rumbold
23rd November, 2009 at 11:16 am
Dr Mitu Khurana is a doctor in India who fears for her children’s lives after repeated attempts by her husband and her in-laws to abort and then kill her daughters (he wanted a son). Dr. Kamal Khurana denies the allegations, but an NGO and other groups have taken up Dr. Mitu’s case. Her case has been extensively covered in the India media, but it has still not brought her justice or the safety of her daughters. Here is her story in her own words:
I, Mitu Khurana, a pediatrician and mother of twin girls, would like to share my experience in saving my girls from being killed by my husband and in laws while they were in my womb and subsequently after their birth.
I got married to Dr Kamal Khurana in November 2004. Initially, there was a lot of dowry harassment. In January 2005 I became pregnant. An ultrasound showed that I was carrying twins. Then my mother-in-law started demanding that I undergo a sex determination test. I was even tortured to get it done. My husband and in-laws would deny me food and water and fight with me every day to undergo the sex determination tests. I, with full support from my parents, tried resisting it
So my in-laws and husband got it done by deception. Knowing that I was allergic to eggs, they fed me cake made with eggs, all the while assuring me it was eggless. I developed allergic manifestations — stomachache, loose motions and vomiting. I was taken to the hospital.
My mother-in-law asked me many times to at least get one child killed in-utero. I was kept without food and water. My husband who began ignoring me even turned me out of the house at 10:00 one night and asked me to go to my father’s house. When I asked him to let me take my mobile and car keys as I did not want to be stranded at night at this stage of pregnancy, he said “is ghar se kisi cheez ko haath lagaya to thapar parega (if you take anything from this house, I will slap you)”. My father-in-law intervened and asked my husband to let me stay the night, and in the morning I could be sent to my parents.
My mother-in- law even told me that my two daughters would be a big burden on the family and I should get them aborted. If not both, she said get at least one aborted. When I refused she said at least give one of them for adoption. After three incidents where they tried to compel me to abort and misbehaved with me, my father took me to his house.
Mine was a lonely battle to give birth to the twins in my womb. After finding out that I was to have twin girls, my in- laws and husband seldom accompanied me for antenatal tests or hospital visits. My mother would accompany me for all my tests etc. My husband would frequently fight with me. He even demanded that a D.N.A should be conducted to establish the paternity of the twins because his mother had been told by some priest her son would have just one son. As I was carrying two daughters, he said they could not be his children.
I pointed out to my mother-in-law, that it was the father’s sperms that are responsible for sex of the babies. Her reply was that my fault was that I was not ready to abort them. Due all the tension, I delivered two-pre term daughters on August 11 2005. For nine days after the birth of my twins, my in-laws never visited me. Then my in-laws came. They said “God forbid, we ever become buas of girls again” .My mother-in-law said, “They were born in the seventh month so they are not going to survive anyway”.
I tried many times to go back to my in-laws’ house. However, there was a lot of verbal abuse and I had no help in looking after the children. My mother-in-law even deliberately pushed down my 4-month-old daughter from the staircase and pretended it was an accident. Fortunately I was able to hold her carry cot and save her from harm. They never showed any love or affection towards them.
Though I had complained to the police station during my pregnancy about the sex determination test conducted and the pressure to have an abortion, I had requested them not to take any action as I thought that my in-laws would come around and accept my daughters.
In March 2008, my husband threw me out in the middle of the night, and asked me for a mutual consent divorce, because he wanted to remarry and have sons. It was during this visit to my matrimonial house, that I came across the discharge papers, and reports of ultrasounds done during my pregnancy (those papers had been always in the custody of my husband).
COMPLAINT UNDER PC-PNDT ACT AND ATTITUDE OF THE AUTHORITIES.
On April 10 2008, I filed a complaint to the Women’s Commissions, the health minister, and various N.G.Os. On May 9 2008, I filed a complaint. On June 5, I got reply to a RTI application that the Central Monitoring Committee along with District Appropriate Authority (NORTH WEST DELHI) had raided the hospital on 3rd June 2008, and again I got a reply from District Appropriate Authority that during raid it was found that no form F was filed.
P.C-P.N.D.T ACT which prohibits sex determination during pregnancy states that “Person conducting ultrasonography on a pregnant women shall keep complete record thereof in the clinic/centre in Form – F and any deficiency or inaccuracy found therein shall amount to contravention of provisions of section 5 or section 6 of the Act, unless contrary is proved by the person conducting such ultrasonography.â€
Here section 5 & section 6 states- 5. Written consent of pregnant woman and prohibition of communicating the sex of fetus. (1) No person referred to in clause (2) of section 3 shall conduct the pre-natal diagnostic procedures unless (a) He has explained all known side and after effects of such procedures to the pregnant woman concerned.
Yet still no action was taken. When my case was highlighted in the media, I got a letter from District Appropriate Authority asking me to appear before them and express my views. I went to meet the C.D.M.O and asked about the value of my statement in this case. I was told that the law needs to be explored. It was also suggested that I should not do anything in an impulsive manner, which I may regret later. I was also told that I should try to reconcile with my husband. I was also asked the benefit I would get if the ultrasound machine was sealed. I was told the ultrasound machine was a very useful tool for diagnosis and someone could suffer if it was sealed.
I pointed out to the C.D.M.O that his statement that I should try to reconcile with my husband, and the wish for a son was not something I could not fulfill, as I could always get pregnant again, implied that he was encouraging me to undergo sex determination test should I get pregnant again. It also implied that he considers women as baby producing machines who must go on producing children till they manage to produce a son. No answer has been given about why the foetal ultrasound was done in the first place, when it was never asked for. In the meantime all my letters went unanswered.
I filed a private case under P.C-PNDT act in November 2008. In January 2009, the appropriate authority also filed a case against Jaipur Golden Hospital. Now both cases are pending in the court. Dr Kiran Walia, minister for health and family welfare, had the case reopened once she came into power. She also saw to it that the CDMO handling my case is changed. I am thankful to her for the support she has given me.
I am still facing harassment from all quarters to withdraw my cases. Every authority, be it in the police, the judiciary, or the hospital where I was working, are trying to force me to withdraw my cases. It was due to this harassment and certain threats that I had to leave my job recently.
Even a High Court Judge has suggested that I should try to reconcile with my husband. When asked what he meant by reconciling, he said that I should try to live with my husband. I pointed out to him: ‘I and my daughters will be killed the day I move in with my husband.’ The judge said if I do not want to live with my husband I could divorce him through mutual consent. I said that I would do this if the Hindu divorce law was amended and enabled a man to divorce his wife if she fails to provide him a son. My mistake according to my husband and in-laws is only that I conceived daughters and refused to abort them. Now the court has taken cognizance against hospital, my in laws and husband suddenly want the custody of the children.
My daughters will be killed the day they go their grandparents. Please help me save my daughters.
Dr. Mitu Khurana: the fight goes on
by Rumbold
4th October, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Dr. Mitu Khurana, whose case Pickled Politics covered extensively here and here, is facing new obstacles in the fight to gain permanent custody of her two daughters, Guddu and Pari.
Dr. Mitu has been battling her husband and in-laws for years. Her troubles began when she refused to have an ultrasound (which is illegal in India due to the fear of female foeticide if the mother is found to be pregnant with girls); this upset her in-laws, who poisoned her and took her to a hospital in order to have the ultrasound done. When it was found she was pregnant with twin girls, she was pressured to have an abortion. She refused, and when they were born, she was expected to give them up for adoption. She did not want to, so her in-laws started conspiring against her, with her mother in-law pushing her then four month old daughter down the stars on one occasion.
Dr. Mitu eventually left the house with her daughters for good, and filed a complaint under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act, the first individual to do so. Since then her in-laws have taken her to court in order to gain partial custody of her children, an action she believes is merely a ploy in order to get her to drop the complaint against them and the hospital. Numerous officials she has encountered have been unsympathetic or downright hostile. A high court judge even told her to reconcile with her husband and in-laws after they had tried to kill one of her daughters.
Now, with the court case dragging on, Dr. Mitu was shocked to find that her husband has applied to take custody of the now five-year old twins, whom Dr. Mitu is forced to bring to every court session (about once a month) for no apparent reason.
Dr. Mitu Khurana wins award
by Rumbold
12th January, 2011 at 10:26 am
I was pleased to see that CNN-IBN, an Indian media network, has awarded Dr. Mitu Khurana one of its Citizen Journalist awards. The prize, which recognises ‘ordinary’ (i.e. those who are not journalists) Indians who have exposed or campaigned for something, such as a disabled passenger who secretly filmed people refusing to get up from the disabled seats for him. Dr. Mitu’s citation reads:
Citizen Journalist, Dr. Mitu Khurana, is a Delhi based pediatrician. She is the first woman to have filed a case under the PC-PNDT act against her husband and in laws. She also filed a case against a Delhi based hospital and the doctor who did an ultra sound on her to determine the sex of her twins fetuses. Mitu’s in-laws who wanted her to undergo an abortion tortured, her. She endured the abuse and harassment. She gave premature birth to twin girls. Her ordeal didn’t end there. Mitu’s attempts over 3 years to get her husband to accept the girls failed. Instead, she was thrown out of the house, so that her husband could marry again. Mitu is now trying to fight the case under the PCPNDT Act that clearly states that hospital and doctors should neither conduct sex determination tests nor disclose the sex of the fetuses. She turned CJ to create awareness about the Pre conception and Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection¬) Act that bans sex determination tests in India.
We have been following her case for some time on Pickled Politics (see here, here and here). Dr. Mitu is now engaged in a custody battle with her ex-husband, who is using the threat of losing her daughters as a way to pressure her into dropping the case against him, his relatives and the official bodies. She has been repeatedly maligned by the previous judge, other officials and her former in-laws, so it is heartening to see that this brave woman, who is challenging the culture of aborting female babies en masse, is receiving more recognition.
Mitu Khurana’s children under new threat
by Rumbold
5th May, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Dr Mitu Khurana is an Indian doctor and activist whose case we have covered a number of times on Pickled Politics. She is now facing a fresh and imminent threat to her daughters. Her case to date is best summarised by the below two paragraphs:
****
Dr. Mitu has been battling her husband and in-laws for years. Her troubles began when she refused to have an ultrasound (which is illegal in India due to the fear of female foeticide if the mother is found to be pregnant with girls); this upset her in-laws, who poisoned her and took her to a hospital in order to have the ultrasound done. When it was found she was pregnant with twin girls, she was pressured to have an abortion. She refused, and when they were born, she was expected to give them up for adoption. She did not want to, so her in-laws started conspiring against her, with her mother in-law pushing her then four month old daughter down the stars on one occasion.
Dr. Mitu eventually left the house with her daughters for good, and filed a complaint under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act, the first individual to do so. Since then her in-laws have taken her to court in order to gain partial custody of her children, an action she believes is merely a ploy in order to get her to drop the complaint against them and the hospital. Numerous officials she has encountered have been unsympathetic or downright hostile. A high court judge even told her to reconcile with her husband and in-laws after they had tried to kill one of her daughters.
****
Now a court has awarded her husband visitation rights, despite the fact that he showed no interest in them prior to being accused of bringing about an illegal ultrasound. Dr. Mitu fears this could endanger her children, and puts further pressure on her to drop the sex determination case, as this would be the only way to get her in laws dropping their custody case.
Her husband is due to visit them on the fifteenth, and Mitu and a number of other activists are trying to prevent them from happening by lobbying politicians. Anyone in India should write to the president or local MP, whilst in England we should contact the Indian High Commission in London:
High Commission of India
India House
Aldwych
London
WC2B 4NA
Women fight for life
Sponsored by One World Action
Theme: Women's rights
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 July 2009 09.38 BST
It looked like a bundle of rags, but the tiny parcel being thrust towards us was a baby.
Little Dipali's appearance was shocking – twiggy legs, baggy skin and an oversized head that made her look premature at two months old. She was, warned Dr Subho Pal, so severely malnourished that she would die within weeks without treatment.
Dipali's mother had died in childbirth aged 16 – a victim of India's high maternal death rate. The infant's condition was all too common in a country where 42% of children are malnourished, despite booming economic growth.
Dr Pal – a paediatrician with the Child in Need Institute, an NGO which runs clinics and education programmes in and around Kolkata – blames this crisis on the low status of women in Indian society.
"Malnutrition is a social problem, not a health problem," he says. "This goes far deeper than the problem of underweight children. It's going to hold India back unless we improve the status, health and education of women."
India is home to more than a quarter of the world's hungry – some 230 million people – according to the World Food Program, whose researchers found anaemia is also rising among rural women.
Underweight children can be sickly and their growth stunted. Healthy, empowered women raise healthier children.
Dr Pal says: "This is a cyclical problem that starts with early marriage and frequent pregnancy. Many women are in poor health. They eat last at home and are unlikely to eat well or to rest during pregnancy.
"They are prone to having low-weight babies and may struggle feeding them. And because they are uneducated they can't look after their children properly."
Such issues are symptoms of a society in which boys are valued and daughters considered worthless. As Indians become richer, dowries – outlawed but ubiquitous – grow bigger, putting families off having girls.
Sex-selective abortions are rife among the middle class, and female infanticide remains rampant. Sati – the burning alive of a Hindu widow on her husband's pyre – is illegal but persists in some areas.
Unicef reports that under-five mortality rates are 40% higher for girls than boys. And one Indian woman dies through pregnancy or childbirth every five minutes.
When the 1990 census revealed that there were 25 million fewer women than men in India, the government introduced the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act, outlawing gender detection. Despite this more than a million female foetuses continue to be aborted annually. Some say India's gender gap may now be as high as 50 million.
In last year's Disappearing Daughters report, researchers from ActionAid and the International Development Research Centre warned: "Given the enormous pressure on families to avoid having girls, the use of ultrasound technology is now considered a 'rational' way to plan a family."
Researchers found it was easy to arrange the illegal tests and abortions for just a few thousand rupees – up to £30. The latest method of exterminating girls on offer is sex-selective conception.
Writer and activist Rita Banerji, who runs the 50 Million Missing campaign, is worried. "The way it stands, India's social and cultural mechanisms are geared toward selectively weeding out women and girls en masse," she says.
"Women in this country are lucky to escape being killed at almost every stage of their life – as a foetus, as an infant, as a little girl, a bride, a mother, and even a widow.
"The value system is saying we don't want daughters, and that the lives of girls and women are easily dispensable. It is a massive, irreversible humanitarian crisis, and a disgraceful failure of law and order."
Where legislation exists, enforcement is poor and corruption endemic. By 2007, 13 years after its introduction, only one conviction had been secured under the PNDT Act.
India is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (Cedaw), and gender equality is enshrined in its constitution. But the issue cuts deeper – with the view of women as second-class citizens engrained in the Indian mindset.
In a 2007 report on Cedaw, the National Alliance of Women called on the government to tackle prejudice. "Doctors, police personnel, lawyers and judges believe in the subordination of women and the need to circumscribe their movements. "The absence of clear censor guidelines on sexual stereotypes results in the unhindered portrayal of the glorification of women's subordination," it warned.
Modest gains have been made. In 2005, pressure from women's groups led the government to pass the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. The new law embraces the UN's definition of violence as being any form of abuse, whether emotional, physical, sexual or verbal. Marital rape has since been criminalised.
But many cases will go unreported, unless attitudes change. A 2007 UN Population Fund study found that 70% of Indian women believed wife beating was justified under certain circumstances, including refusal to provide sex, or preparing dinner late.
A handful of courageous women are using the law to fight for their rights. Delhi doctor Mitu Khurana is making history by suing her husband, in-laws and a hospital under the PNDT act after they tricked her into having a foetal ultrasound and pressured her to abort her twins – which she refused to do.
The government hopes that greater economic freedom will help. India's 11th five-year plan, announced in March, aims to improve women's legal rights to land and installing them on villages councils.
Meanwhile on a micro level, NGOs are bridging the gaps left by India's creaking bureaucracy. At CINI's clinics, women are given prenatal checks, and crucial family planning and nutritional advice. It recruits teenage girls to deliver key messages to young mothers, in the hope of breaking the cycle of despair.
Dr Pal says the government must do more. "I'm convinced we're making progress, but we have to focus more attention on improving the status of women if we are to build a healthier and more equal society. Groups like ours are running a parallel health and social system because the government is not doing all it should. This has to change."
This longlisted article was published on 23 July 2009. It was written for the Guardian's International Development Journalism Competition between 1 April and 22 June 2009.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
ZAŽILA JSEM PRAVÉ PEKLO: MANŽEL CHTĚL ZABÍT NAŠE DĚTI!
Dva měsíce po svatbě jsem zjistila, že čekám dvojčata. Kamal a jeho rodina na mě naléhali, abych podstoupila test na zjištění pohlaví dětí. V Indii chce každý syna.
Chlapci jsou vychováváni, aby vydělávali peníze, zatímco dívky rodinu naopak finančně ždímou – musí se zaplatit jejich výchova a ještě šetřit na věno. Říká se tu, že mít dceru je stejné jako zalévat sousedovu zahrádku.
Plno žen si proto hned po otěhotnění dává pohlaví dítěte zjišťovat, ačkoli je to nelegální. Pokud čekají dívku, často tajně potratí.
Tlaku jsem odolávala asi pět týdnů, v dubnu se mi však situace vymkla z rukou. Švagrová upekla koláč, a přestože věděla, že mám alergii na vejce, donutila mě kus ochutnat. Začala jsem zvracet, takže získali důvod odvézt mě do nemocnice.
Svíjela jsem se v bolestech, děsila se, že jsem potratila. Gynekolog mi udělal ultrazvuk, a manžel a jeho matka tak zjistili, že čekám holčičky.
Řekli mi, že musím jít na potrat. Tchyně našla kliniku, kde by oba, nebo alespoň jeden plod odstranili za 100 000 rupií (asi 37 000 korun). Byla jsem zděšená. Nikdy jsem nepřemýšlela o tom, že bych mohla zabít své dítě.
Zdálo se mi, že Kamal a jeho rodina osnují plán, jak ukončit mé těhotenství. Bydleli jsme s jeho matkou a sestrou, jak velí tradice. Od svatby se ke mně všichni chovali jako k otrokovi.
Přestože mi v nemocnici doporučili, ať zůstanu několik dní v posteli, musela jsem vstát a umýt podlahu v celém domě. Ani mi nedávali pořádně najíst, každým dnem jsem byla hubenější. Když jsem se pokusila vyjádřit své pocity, tchyně mi suše odsekla, že v této rodině nemá žena právo mluvit.
Ve dvacátém týdnu těhotenství mě Kamal shodil ze schodů. Krvácela jsem a břicho se mi svíralo bolestí, tchyně mě však zamkla v koupelně a posmívala se mi: „Snad konečně potratíš, nezkoušej nikoho volat...“
Více se dozvíte v Marie Claire 1/2010.
India's Anti-Feticide Plan Frustrates Leading Critic
By Gagandeep
WeNews correspondent
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
In an effort to fix its skewed sex ratio, India is mulling cash incentives for poorer families who have baby girls. But critics say the government would gain more by enforcing its 1994 law against feticide.
NEW DELHI (WOMENSENEWS)--In a bid to curb the growing pace of female feticide, India is mulling offering cash incentives to the families of baby girls in an effort to limit the number of sex-selective abortions in favor of boys.
The plan, presented to the cabinet in March but still under review, stipulates that a girl's family will get financial benefits worth around $5,000, including health insurance, until she is 18, if she is sent to school and remains unmarried.
If approved it would authorize the government to spend around $2.5 million in the coming year, with grants focused on families in 10 districts of the states of Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.
Manjula Krishnan, economic advisor for the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, said the plan targets families whose incomes put them below the poverty line and will encourage these families to look upon girls as an asset rather than a liability.
Traditionally, girls have lower family status; boys carry the family name and don't require dowry payments.
But Dr. Sabu George, a leading critic of medical sex selection, says the government could help curb the practice by doing more to enforce the country's 14-year-old anti-feticide law.
"As of now, doctors are convinced that they won't be caught by law-enforcing agencies. And till the law is enforced, no scheme is going to have any impact," says George, a researcher with the Center for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes, a voluntary organization based in Mumbai. This past August he filed a case in Supreme Court against three U.S.-based firms--Google India, Yahoo India and a division of Microsoft Corporation--for providing sex-determination information on the Web in violation of the law.
Research Raises Question
The initiative's focus on low-income families is also called into question by a 2006 study in the Lancet, the British medical journal, finding abortion for the purpose of male selection most rampant in families who are better educated and affluent enough to afford both diagnostic procedures and dowries. Selective abortions may result in 500,000 abortions of female fetuses a year, according to the research, which was based on a national survey of over 1 million households in 1998.
India's adult sex ratio is 933 females per 1,000 males, according to 2001 census figures. In more affluent states like Punjab, Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana the ratio is even lower. All of these states have fewer than 875 females per 1,000 males.
India's child sex ratio is even more imbalanced: 927 girls for every 1,000 boys under age 6. Worldwide slightly more boys are born than girls but more boys die in the first year of life.
One area of Punjab, India's wealthiest state, has just 300 girls to every 1,000 boys, according to a June 23 report issued by the London-based charity Action Aid and the International Development Research Center, based in Ottawa, Canada. The groups also say that the gender ratio in five states is becoming more skewed since the 2001 census.
Abortion became legal in India with the passage of a 1971 law allowing doctors to perform the procedure at any time before 20 weeks of gestation.
Prohibited Since 1994
But female feticide--defined as misusing techniques to determine the sex of a fetus for the purpose of aborting those that are female--has been prohibited since 1994 under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, which bans doctors from revealing the sex of a fetus to prospective parents.
Since 1994, only 350 cases have been filed under the law. Of those, 226 were for running a clinic without registration, 37 for revealing the sex of the fetus and 27 for advertising sex-selection services.
Penalties for doctors who abort a healthy female fetus after a sex-selection test are imprisonment for up to three years and a fine up to $250. This is increased to five years and $2,500 for subsequent offenses. Doctors may be suspended from practicing if convicted.
The law also focuses on pregnant women and her family members who undertake sex-selective abortions as well, providing for a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of 10,000 rupees, about $250.
In March, prominent New Delhi gynecologist Dr. Mangala Telang was arrested and her medical license suspended after she was recorded by the BBC taking money in exchange for information about the sex of a fetus. She faces charges under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act.
Previously, only one case resulted in prosecution, when a doctor was sentenced to two years in prison in 2006 and fined about $125, according to media reports.
In August, a New Delhi doctor, Mitu Khurana, brought a lawsuit against her husband, also a doctor, and his parents for illegally obtaining the sex-selection test and pressuring her to abort. Today she is a mother of twin girls. The case is still under investigation.
Drumming Up Demand
George and other activists accuse doctors of drumming up patient demand for sex-selection procedures and want it declared as medical malpractice.
But one doctor who declined to be named denied that. "We do it because there is demand for sex selection in the country," the doctor told Women's eNews. "Do you think we would be able to conduct sex-selection abortions if couples do not want it? If I don't do it somebody else will."
"Sex-selective abortions are an organized mass medical crime," says George, who has been researching female feticide for more than two decades. "Doctors and medical practitioners are doing it for money and they are convinced that they are not going to get caught."
Because it is so easy to find doctors to conduct the illegal sex-diagnostic tests--some advertise openly--George regards the government as lax in monitoring the practice.
Other officials have proposed a variety of crackdowns and incentives to curb the crime.
Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has advocated in March for a life sentence for doctors who perform sex-selective abortions.
The Ministry for Women and Child Development plans to offer cash incentive to district magistrates who are able to control the skewed sex ratio in their area, but has not offered a specific timeline for implementing the program.
Gagandeep is a freelance writer based in New Delhi writing mainly on development issues.
Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.
http://womensenews.org/story/the-world/081001/indias-anti-feticide-plan-frustrates-leading-critic
“Sometimes We Have To Take The Law In Our Hands”: Pink Ladies Fight For Rights
Sampat Pal Devi, a mother of five in Banda, one of India's poorest areas, says "nobody comes to our help in these parts. The officials and the police are corrupt and anti-poor. So sometimes we have to take the law in our hands." To do this, she started the "gulabi gang," or pink gang, two years ago. The gang members wear pink and use beatings and humiliation to combat domestic abuse and corruption.
Devi and her fellow vigilantes are a sign of how bad things can be for women in India — Banda natives say it's no surprise that women have resorted to violence to combat discrimination. But it's also a sign that things may be improving, that after generations of second-class status, Indian women are taking unprecedented social power.
They have a lot to fight against. Though prenatal gender testing and gender-selective abortion are now illegal in India, having a baby girl is still widely considered shameful, and over 10 million baby girls have been killed in the last 20 years. Only 798 girls were born in Punjab last year for every 1,000 boys. Because of dowry requirements, many families think of girls as a financial liability, and stories of women being abused are common. The problem isn't confined to poor areas like Banda — Delhi pediatrician Mitu Khurana is taking legal action against her husband and his family for trying to force her to abort her twin girls. "Even as an educated woman," she says, "I am pushed around."
The Times of India, however, tells a different story. According to an article called "Macho girls!," "women in every sphere have come into their own in the last two decades." They are entering traditionally male professions, becoming collections agents and security guards on the India-Pakistan border. They are dressing in Western suits in order to appear more "businesslike." Fitness expert Leena Mogre says "the Madonna influence" has caused 40 percent more women in the last year to seek "defined arms, something that was earlier only demanded by men."
Sangeeta Singh, executive director of international accounting firm KPMG, says "economic independence has made women feel more confident about their personal lives. Hence, they are taking more personal decisions or forming their own support networks." Many women in Banda don't have economic independence. And many throughout India still suffer from the prejudice against girls. But if the pink gang is any indication, women across Indian society are indeed "forming their own support networks." Sampat Pal Devi says, "village society in India is loaded against women. [...] Village women need to study and become independent to sort it out themselves." And although their methods may be a little disturbing (thrashing a policeman, for instance), the pink gang is doing exactly that.
India's 'Pink' Vigilante Women [BBC]
Where A Baby Girl Is A Mother's Awful Shame [Guardian]
Macho Girls! [Times of India]
Where a baby girl is a mother's awful shame
Gethin Chamberlain in Delhi
The Observer, Sunday 23 November 2008
Over the past 20 years in India, 10 million female babies have been aborted. The pressure to have sons is terrifying - mothers who bear daughters are beaten or cast aside by husbands and in-laws desperate to escape the financial burden of a girl's dowry. Now mothers are being urged to 'save the girl child' as the country tries to end decades of tragic abuse
Munni (left of picture) and Rekha in Bawana on the outskirts of Delhi. Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain
The birth of Rekha's second daughter should have been one of the happiest days of her life. Instead, she lay on the bed of her home on the outskirts of Delhi, the newborn child on the floor, screaming in terror as her mother-in-law poured paraffin over her.
This was her punishment, the older woman said, preparing to strike a match: Rekha had failed again to deliver a son and it would be better for everyone if she were dead. Suddenly the door burst open and her neighbours rushed in, roused by the frantic screaming. They bundled Rekha and her daughter out of the house, never to return.
In a country where boys remain prized and having a daughter is considered by many to be a curse, they were lucky. Many are not so fortunate. India has banned pre-natal scanning to determine the sex of a baby and made aborting a child as a result of such a scan punishable with five years in prison. Poster campaigns urge Indians to 'save the girl child'.
Yet the latest birth figures tell a story. In the state of Punjab, only 798 girls were born for every 1,000 boys. Haryana was next up the list with 819, followed by Chandigarh with 845 and Delhi, the national capital, came in fourth with 868. The Delhi-based Centre for Social Research, which recently surveyed the worst-affected parts of Delhi, estimates that 10 million girls have been lost to female foeticide in India over the past 20 years.
Most alarming for those monitoring the figures is the fact that the gap appears to be widening. Today the national average for births is 933 girls to 1,000 boys; in 1991 it was 945. 'The low numbers in a state like Delhi tells us the enormity of the situation,' said Anju Dubey Panbey, of the Centre for Social Research. 'In India today, if you are blessed with a son you are almost revered, and if you are the mother of daughters you are made to feel guilty and your status in your family goes down. It is very, very disturbing.'
Despite every effort to change perceptions, she said, many Indians simply do not want daughters, who are still seen as a financial burden because of the matrimonial dowry demanded by a groom's family. 'People don't want girls, because they have to worry about their safety and security and they have to pay to get them married off. People say bringing up a daughter is like watering a neighbour's plant,' she said.
The answer, for many, is to turn to the ultrasound clinics which display large notices warning that they are prohibited by law from carrying out scans to determine the sex of a baby - but which will do it if the price is right.
The Observer spoke to a number of medical practitioners and women who had attended such clinics. They revealed that one common trick involves using the form which the law requires to be signed to affirm that no sex determination has taken place. If the scan shows the foetus is male, the form will be signed in blue; if it is a girl the signature will be in red. Other clinics hand the family a blue sweet for a boy, a pink one for a girl. They can then arrange a quick abortion.
A scan costs about 2,000 rupees (£30). Those who cannot afford those prices turn to the unqualified midwives who proliferate in the poorer areas and who rely on less scientific methods. Some use crystals, others claim to be able to discern the sex from the way the baby is lying in the womb: a boy if the left side of the stomach is larger, a girl for the right.
There are plenty of such midwives in the industrial squalor of Bawana in Haryana state, on the north-western fringes of Delhi. Most of the residents were resettled there five years ago after being forced out of an illegal slum in the capital; many still spend a significant proportion of their income travelling back into Delhi every day to work as domestic staff. The area is pitifully poor and few feel they can afford the luxury of daughters. It is easier to pay the 500 rupees the midwives demand for a makeshift abortion.
This is where Rekha still lives. Dressed in a cheap blue-and-white sari, she sits nursing the one son she managed to bear before she was driven out. She talks about the beatings, how her mother-in-law asked her to kill her first daughter after she was born. 'They used to say they would throw me out and get another girl who could have more sons,' she said. Her story is extreme, but the pressure placed on her is not unusual. Munni, a neighbour in her early thirties, said she had already had one daughter and two sons when she found out she was pregnant a month ago. She and her husband, an electrician, could not afford a daughter, she said.
'I was afraid that it would be a girl child. I went for a lab test and they were asking 5,000 rupees, and I could not afford that, but the doctors said it looked as if I was carrying a girl, so I had an abortion. I went to one of the clinics near here to have it done. For any mother a daughter is not a burden, but for the family it is,' she said.
Another neighbour, Sheila Devi, said she was also worried after her first daughter was born. When she became pregnant again, she paid for a scan and was told that she was carrying a girl, so she went to a clinic a little way away and had an abortion. She now has three daughters, the youngest three months old, and one son. 'We wanted a boy, which is why we kept trying, but we ended up with three girls,' she said. 'My in-laws were creating a lot of problems because I had so many girls. They said it is my fault because I'm the one having girls all the time.' With demand apparently rising, those clinics prepared to flout the law are doing brisk business. The Centre for Social Research study found that more than 400 breaches of India's Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act had been reported, and a maximum fine of 40,000 rupees did not appear to be proving much of a deterrent.
The Observer visited a number in the Burari area of Delhi which are facing prosecution. The area is littered with small clinics offering scans. The Nanak Hospital displays a board outside warning that sex selection is prohibited, but the man who runs it, Dr Harkiran Singh, is facing prosecution for carrying out an illegal abortion.
The hospital is a grubby building by the side of the road, with a reception area crammed with women and children. In his tiny consulting room, Singh insisted he was resolutely opposed to sex selection - 'for me it is a strict no, it shouldn't even be in your mind' - but was unable to explain why he had been arrested and bailed. 'I think it was bad luck,' he said.
But he had heard of other clinics that were doing it. 'Whoever is desperate will go from pillar to post to find it and there may be places that will do it,' he said. 'My friends say that they are getting these inquiries. In the cities it is more difficult, but elsewhere it is not so hard to find.'
It is not just the backstreet clinics that stand accused. The large and modern Jaipur Golden Hospital in Rohini, Delhi, has been named in a case brought by a paediatrician, Dr Mitu Khurana, who claims she was taken there by her in-laws and scanned against her will. Once they discovered she was carrying a girl, they tried to make her have an abortion. She has lodged an action against her husband, his family and the hospital.
Dr Ashish Chandra, a senior administrator at the hospital, admitted that the hospital had destroyed the paperwork relating to the case but denied any wrongdoing. Instead he complained that the authorities were going after the wrong people. 'The law is well-intentioned, but the problem is in the implementation. The big hospitals like this follow the rules scrupulously, but what about the outside areas, where there is no regulation? There is an unregulated market,' he said. 'The authorities should be following up the people who are doing the ultrasounds, the one-man bands, because it is easier for them to do it.'
Earlier this year, India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, condemned female foeticide as 'inhuman, uncivilised and reprehensible'. Yet the sheer scale of the problem appears to be thwarting the government's stated intention to tackle it. The High Court in Delhi recently took Google and other internet firms to task for running ads for sex selective abortion. But no sooner does one door shut than another one opens. Before scans were widely available, unwanted girls tended to be killed shortly after birth. With the arrival of scans, the focus switched to abortions.
Now those with enough money can go one step further by using IVF treatment to ensure that they get a male child. Fertility expert Dr Shivani Sachdev Gour, of Delhi's Phoenix Hospital, said she was regularly approached by wealthy families who offered 500,000 rupees or more to ensure that their next child was a boy. 'They put tremendous pressure on you for sex selection for embryos. They want you to implant a male child. It is illegal to select embryos on the basis of sex, but they are determined to get it done and money is not a problem for them. People are blatant. I tell them it is illegal, but they say [they] know that.'
She said that although her own hospital rejected such approaches others did not. 'I know there are clinics in Delhi that do this. I know of a few places where the charges are five or 10 times what a normal scan would cost, but still people are doing it and there is a market for it. I just don't know what to say about my doctor colleagues who are doing it. I just don't know what to say.'
'He threw me out to remarry someone who can give him a son'
The pregnant mother forced to flee her husband
Dr Mitu Khurana, 32, had been married only two months when she became pregnant with twins in January 2005. It was the start of a nightmare that has seen her become the first woman in Delhi to start legal proceedings against her husband for trying to force her to abort their babies.
Dr Khurana says her husband, Dr Kamal Khurana, and his family were determined that she should not give birth to girls. She said that when she was admitted to the Jaipur Golden Hospital in Rohini on an unrelated matter, her husband and mother-in-law persuaded the staff to carry out an ultrasound scan to determine the sex of the babies.
'They didn't say anything to me, but afterwards it was clear that my husband and my in-laws knew that I was carrying girls,' she said. 'After that, they began badgering me to have at least one of them killed. They told me we could not bring up two girls, we would not be able to afford to get them married.'
Her husband maintained that as a priest had told him he would only father one son, the girls could not be his. He demanded a DNA test. Dr Khurana gave birth to the girls, Guddu and Pari, two months prematurely on 11 August, 2005. She maintained that, when one of the girls was four months old, her mother-in-law tried to push the child down the stairs.
Faced with open hostility from her husband and his family, she eventually left her husband in March. 'He threw me out of the house because he wants to remarry someone who can give him a son,' she said. She has filed a complaint, which is being investigated under India's Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act. But she said she had struggled to have her allegations taken seriously.
'Even as an educated woman I am pushed around,' she said. 'But my daughters are now my biggest source of happiness, and I am proud that I have saved them.'
She already had two girls - then a third pregnancy led to tragedy
The mother who died after forced abortion
Nirmala Devi had given birth to two daughters when she became pregnant again this year. She died on 21 October after undergoing an abortion, allegedly forced on her by her husband and his family.
According to a report filed to the police by her brother, Surender Singh, Nirmala had been under pressure for some time to produce a male child. Singh told the police that her husband, Prem Singh, and his family had regularly beaten her since their wedding in 2003.
When they discovered she was pregnant again, they forced her to undergo an ultrasound test at a clinic in Noida, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, to determine the sex of the three-month-old foetus. The test apparently revealed that the child was a girl and she was taken to a hospital where an abortion was carried out. She failed to regain consciousness and died later at her home, where she had been taken by her husband.
Police have registered a case for murder and placing a woman under pressure to abort a female foetus. A police spokesman said they were investigating claims that she had been harassed to the point where 'she succumbed to their torture and died'.
Prem Singh, his mother Govindi Devi, father Dugar Singh and sister Bhagwati Devi have all been arrested in connection with the allegations.
Prem Singh claims that she demanded an abortion and that she underwent the procedure voluntarily.
'My husband beat me a lot and my mother-in-law tortured me
Teenage mother of two daughters tortured by in-laws
Rekha was eight when she was married. Now 18, her first daughter was born when she was just 13. She now lives with her mother in Bawana, an industrial area in Haryana state on the north-western edge of Delhi.
Although she also bore her husband one son, it was not enough for him or his family. They were angry that she was burdening them with the two daughters she gave birth to. 'It started when my first daughter was born,' she said. 'My husband beat me a lot and my mother-in-law tortured me.' They would hit me with sticks and anything they could get their hands on.
'When I had my first girl my mother-in-law wanted me to kill her once she was born. When the second girl was born, the day she was born, my mother-in-law was asking me to leave the house and I would not leave. She came into the room I was in. I was on the bed. She poured [paraffin] on me and she had matches and she was threatening to light it. The baby was sleeping on the floor when she did this.
'I started screaming and crying and the neighbours ran in and they said to me that it was better that I leave the house because I would be killed if I stayed. My mother-in-law just said it would be better if I were dead.'
She left the house that day and has not been back there since.
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