New study by AIIMS reveals selective feticide
A new study published in the latest issue of the ‘Medico-legal Journal' conducted by a team of researchers from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi has once again brought a shocking revelation to the capital for its rampant selective female feticide in the posh south Delhi area. It now comes in open that the constant campaign against female feticide has not been able to prevent this crime prevalent across the country and especially in the heart of the capital. The illegal pre-natal deaths taking place in different parts of south Delhi should have been checked by the police and intelligence agencies, citing the evidences of abandoning the aborted fetuses and newborns mainly on the roadside, blind lanes followed by rivers and drains in the city. The study covering samples collected between 1996 and 2002 highlights the enormity of the crime badly penetrated among different sections of people in this part of the city. Why soIJ Is there no law or mechanism to prevent the killing of the girl child or to take on the killers of selective feticide per seIJ As per the Census of 2011, the south west districts of Delhi shows dismal record of child sex ratio of 836 girls to 1,000 boys in the age group between zero to six years. The Governments, both at the Centre and in the capital, particularly their concerned Health Ministry's should have taken preventive measures to stop this menace, looking at the abysmal sex ratio. The research shows this 16 years period covered in the study had recorded 238 instances of unborn or newly borns being abandoned which is appalling and the Government should have devised a unique strategy to track the offenders in time.
Realising the entrenched killing spree of mainly the new born girl child's or the children born out of illegitimate relationships, the Government can rope in the resident welfare associations (RWA) in respective localities apart from involving other stakeholders for checking this crime. However, the RWAs consider fertility as a subject of personal or private affair and hence they maintain their defeaning silence on the very socially sensitive issue of illegal abandonment of newborns. However beyond illegitimacy, financial instability and selective female feticide which normally acts as the classical reasons for such crimes, what matters most in these cases, is the widely prevalent patriarchal mindset that is deeply embedded to the killers. Hope this study will act as an eye opener and the security agencies will be able to book the culprits whosoever it may be in the near future.