15 female foetuses recovered in India

[Lady Macbeth]

Kishanganj (Bihar): Police on Sunday found 15 foetuses, of unborn children aged four to six months, from a container from Subhaspalli locality in Bihar's Kishanganj district, a top police official said.



Acting on a tip off, the police found the foetuses from a glass container which was abandoned in a field behind a school, Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Headquarters, Rajya Bardhan Sharma said.

The foetuses have been sent for post-mortem, he said, adding prima facie it appeared that all of them may have been abandoned following abortion through illegal means.

Raids were being carried out at private nursing homes where these foetuses could have been removed, Sharma said. - PTI

The Hindu : Other States / Bihar News : 15 foetuses recovered

[Lady Macbeth]

15 female foetuses 'found on Indian tip


AFP/File – An Indian woman stands on a rubbish dump. Fifteen female foetuses have been found in jars left on a rubbish …

PATNA (AFP) – Fifteen female foetuses have been found in jars left on a rubbish dump, Indian police said Monday, days after census data showed the ratio of girls to boys is at the nation's lowest level since 1947.
The foetuses were recovered Sunday from a dump near a private nursing home in Kishanganj town in the impoverished eastern Indian state of Bihar after they were spotted by children playing cricket, according to police.
Kishanganj lies 400 kilometres (280 miles) from Patna the capital of Bihar.
They were discovered in plastic jars "containing chemical water" and appeared to be between four and six months old, police superintendent R.K. Mishra said. Two male foetuses were also recovered.
"It shocked us and we're taking serious action to expose the people behind the abortion racket," Mishra said.
The grim discovery came after national census figures last week showed India now has just 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six, down from a ratio of 927 for every 1,000 a decade ago.
Despite India's steady economic rise in the past 10 years, the figures showed social bias against having girls remains as strong, with illegal sex-selective abortions facilitated by cheap ultrasound technology.
Women face huge pressure to produce male heirs, seen as breadwinners, family leaders and carers when parents age. Girls are also often viewed as a burden as they require hefty dowries to be married off.
India has a long history of female infanticide -- of girls suffocated, poisoned, drowned or left to die.
But more common now, thanks to technological advances, is the abortion of female foetuses, or "female foeticide" -- a simple, cheap and difficult to police process with ultrasound tests costing as little as $10.
Clinics which have signboards stipulating: "No sex determination tests done here" often pay little more than lip service to the law. Social activists say legal safeguards have been rendered toothless by official apathy.
However, after the latest census data, India's home secretary G.K. Pillai said there was a need for a "complete" review of policies to discourage female foeticide.
Successive governments have launched an array of schemes to change attitudes towards girls, including offering cash incentives to raise them.
But they have had little impact on reducing what has become known in India as the problem of the country's "missing girls."

15 female foetuses 'found on Indian tip' - Yahoo! News