Killin’ Babies!

Dad Wanted A Boy, Not A Girl!

New Delhi – Neha Afreen, a three-month-old baby girl was brought into a state-run hospital in Bangalore with bite marks, head injuries, and abrasions all over her body. The baby was brutalized by her own father, simply because she was a girl and not the son he wanted. She died of her wounds.

“My husband was enraged with me for delivering a girl,” said Afreen’s mother Reshma Banu. “He hated her. He wanted me to get rid of the child or abandon her as he wanted a son.”

This is only the latest incident involving the abuse, neglect, abandonment, and torture of baby girls in India; a newborn in western Jodhpur “was abandoned as her parents fought for the custody of a baby boy handed to them by mistake”‘ and in March an “abandoned two-year-old girl died at a New Delhi hospital after suffering horrific injuries, including broken arms and a smashed skull.”

In a society that values the birth of a son who is seen as a breadwinner and caregiver, over a daughter that is a burden and an expense, it is surprising that we do not hear more stories like these. Yet, it is still shocking to know that the practice of “aborting female fetuses’ is rampant throughout the country.

“The cruelty against girls is crossing all limits,” Ranjana Kumari, director of the non-profit Centre for Social Research, told AFP.

“We need to do a lot more to sensitize the society towards the worth of girls and severely punish people guilty of such crimes,” he added.

Read more at Dawn.