If Haryana finds itself at the bottom of the table in the matter of gender ratio, it is largely because even those who are expected to show others the way are killing unborn girls in womb with impunity.
An elected member of a panchayat from a Fatehabad village is in the dock for his role in a case of alleged female foeticide involving his 35-year-old wife. The panchayat member’s wife has five daughters aged between three and 13 years and she was expecting her sixth baby in November this year.
Buta Ram, a resident of the panchayat member’s Bhodia Khera village, has alleged in a written complaint to the health authorities here that the elected representative of his village committed an offence of female foeticide by aborting a baby developing in his wife’s womb after determination of its gender. The health authorities have launched a probe after receiving the complaint, though the panchayat member and his wife have been maintaining that she suffered a miscarriage accidentally.
“The woman was around four months pregnant, when she underwent an abortion on June 22,” said Dr Satish Garg, Senior Medical Officer at General Hospital, Tohana, who is leading the investigating team. He said the woman’s pregnancy was registered with an anganwari centre in the village and she was duly getting antenatal care from there.
In her statement to the inquiry team, an anganwari worker Paramjit Kaur said a woman of the panchayat member’s family wanted to know where gender determination tests were done, but she changed the topic after she was told that it was illegal to undergo such tests.
The panchayat member and his wife claimed before a team of doctors that visited their village that she fell while walking and suffered the miscarriage after an acute abdominal pain. When asked where she got medical aid after the miscarriage, the woman maintained that she did not go to any doctor.
“We are trying to collect evidences as the statements of the panchayat member and his wife seem to be parroted,” said Dr Garg.
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