KD NEWS SERVICE
SRINAGAR, Mar 12: At least three fetuses have been found inside the Kishtwar district hospital, all the three of whom were female indicating that it could be a case of female foeticide, Times Now reported.
While one was found inside the washroom of Kishtwar district hospital, the other was found inside a dustbin situated within hospital premises and the third was found on the rear side of the hospital. Investigators also suspect that this could be the misdeeds of an illegal abortion racket.
As per latest reports, two people have been detained by authorities for questioning in this regard. The superintendent of the hospital is also being interrogated by investigators in order to get to the bottom of the matter. Such instances of female foeticide have rarely come to light from the state of Jammu and Kashmir with some exceptions that have been reported from Jammu city in the past year.
As many as 117 million girls demographically go “missing” owing to sex-selective abortions, asserted the United Nations Population Fund in a report last year. India still holds the dubious reputation of witnessing one of the highest instances of female foeticide in the twenty-first century. The practice is still prevalent despite the implementation of the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 (PNDT Act) and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act of 1971.
Pertinently, on January 14, this year, in a shocking incident an abandoned new born girl was found dead inside a box across the road from the city’s maternity hospital Lal Ded in Rajbagh area in Srinagar.
According to police, the newborn girl was already dead by the time police got to know about it. “We received a call from the Police Control Room today morning. She was already dead,” the then SHO Rajbagh, Ayaz Rasool had said while detailing that the baby girl was found in a small carton near the Town square crossing in Rajbagh.
He had added that the newborn “must have been left on the spot last night” and was found on Monday morning. “An FIR No. 9/2019 has been registered and we will fulfil other legal formalities,” he had ifnormed.
Abandoning babies in a conservative Kashmir has seen a rise and has been condemned across by the local populace and civil society. In 2015, a dead newborn was carried to Press Enclave by a dog. Last year, a newborn baby was found abandoned near Bahuddin Ganj Baksh Park at Nowhatta locality drawing ire from netizens.
In December 2018 a father tried to bury alive his infant son having a deformity, at Malkha graveyard in Srinagar’s Old City. Police arrested the man who justified the action under the pretext of being poor to take care of the son. The person, Manzoor Ahmad Banyari, a resident of Check Shopian, had approached the gravedigger in Malkha asking him to dig a grave for the infant baby.