Girls in Haryana not safe despite celebrated campaigns

Despite high-profile campaigns like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (BBBP) and Selfie with Daughter, harrowing incidents of sexual violence continue to plague Haryana which has a deep-rooted bias against the girl child.

In a shocking revelation earlier this week, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) unearthed a chilling case from a village in Hisar, where a man had been sexually exploiting minor girls over a span of five years. The accused not only abused the girls, but also recorded videos of the assaults and circulated them online. What makes the case even more disturbing is the complete absence of any police complaint during all those years exposing vulnerability of young girls to such predators.

Another case exposing the lackadaisical attitude of the authorities came to light as the family of a 17-year-old girl missing for over nine months continues to run from pillar to post, but the police have failed to trace her.

Earlier in 2023, a disturbing incident had been reported in Jind district, where the principal of a government senior secondary school was accused of sexually harassing more than 100 girl students. The matter surfaced after a handwritten letter dated August 31 reached the National Commission for Women. The principal though was arrested and later terminated from service who is in jail now with the case being pursued in the Special POCSO Fast Track Court in Jind.

Moreover, two incidents of women — mothers to only girl children, committing suicide in different villages in Hisar district recently once again highlighted the deep-rooted societal pressure to bear male heirs — a pressure that, in these cases, became unbearable.

While campaigns like Selfie with Daughter and BBBP have undeniably influenced public discourse, the reality for many girls in Haryana remains distressing. The state’s sex ratio at birth, which had improved from 871 in 2014 to 923 in 2023, has again slipped to 910 by the end of 2024, according to the State Health Department. This stagnation raises serious concerns about the effectiveness of measures.

These harrowing incidents of sexual abuse of minor girls continue further raised the alarm signals.

Notably, in 2012, a village sarpanch from Bibipur in Jind district kicked off a global social movement by showing a symbolic defiance against gender bias when he distributed sweets in the hospital on the birth of his daughter. As the hospital staff expressed surprise — as this ritual is performed only on the birth of a boy — the sarpanch, Sunil Jaglan, decided to fight the narrative. That spark gave him the idea to start the Selfie with Daughter campaign, which turned into a movement across the globe. Subsequently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also launched the BBBP campaign from Panipat in 2015, aimed at improving the child sex ratio in Haryana and the rest of the country.

Though Jaglan’s efforts through Selfie With Daughter, Lado Panchayats, Balika Sabhas and initiatives like Period Charts brought attention to gender issues in rural spaces, yet the stark contrast between the campaign’s achievements and the recurring crimes against girls across Haryana reveals a troubling truth. However, his campaign was appreciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling it “a brilliant social media initiative”, and President Pranab Mukherjee lauded it as “a worldwide movement against sex selection”. But the social activists also admitted that there is a need for more consistent and focused effort by both state institutions and civil society to celebrate daughters and to safeguard their dignity, dreams, and lives.