Abandonment of newborn girls on

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 13

Over 12 Dhiyan di Lohri events marked celebrations at various schools and colleges of the district, in the city and remote areas of the region, which are relatively notorious in terms of welcoming their girl child.

While the country’s 2011 male-female sex ratio is 943 women per 1,000 men, state’s ratio was 895 women per 1,000 men and city’s ratio was slightly better at 913 women per 1,000 men.

Counting the live births of males as compared to females in the district, there has been a steady rise. In 2015-16, 1,161 less girls were born in the district as compared to boys, in 2016-17, 1,723 less girls were born in the district, in 2017-18, as many as 1,370 less girls were born in the district and in 2018-19 (till August 2018) 531 less girls as compared to boys were born.

These stats are also in tandem with the dramatic reportage of foetuses and abandoned girls in the district. Since July 2018, at least five such incidents of abandoned foetuses or babies have been reported from the district. Such incidents are also on the rise in the periphery. At Garhdiwal in Hoshiarpur as well, a foetus was found in December.

While three persons, including a doctor and two touts, were booked in October after one of the touts nabbed by the police confessed to taking patients to a Kartarpur-based scanning centre for sex determination tests, these persons are also on bail.

The Health Department has failed to investigate the nexus of illegal sex determination tests in the district.

While health teams in the district, for a brief period, had gone on an overdrive in the aftermath of the Bhogpur centre raids which brought much disrepute to the local Health Department, the action stopped after the Kartarpur raids. The Health Department has also failed to brought in public domain the records found at any of these centres.

Activist Surinder Saini said: “Every second day a foetus is being found abandoned. Scanning centres are not being acted against. Several years ago, a foetus found in the city was spotted with a bedsheet of a local hospital. Even sealed hospitals are eventually being opened. None of the authorities have ever tried ascertaining from where the foetuses are coming from. Deaths and abandonment of babies are not being followed up.”