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There have been certain traditional methods perfected through years to execute female infanticide.

Feeding the infant with paddy husk so that it fatally damages the baby’s insides. Feeding poisoned milk or sleeping pills. Drowning the baby in water or milk, smothering it with a pillow, strangling to death, burying her alive, or simply starving her to death.

With occasional arrests and scattered presence of the police, the killers have devised cleverer methods to escape arrest. They dip the baby in cold water after returning from hospital, and wrap it in a wet towel so that it develops pneumonia. They seek medical help later, but only to throw the medicines away and rush to dig a grave.

However, because of the modern diagnostic techniques for monitoring the health of a foetus such as amniocentesis and ultrasound, all these methods may be vanishing.

All that the parents need is a thumb-down gesture from the doctor or scanning technician conveying that it’s a girl. A few hundred rupees paid. And the deal is sealed.

(Source: Disappearing Daugthers – The Tragedy of Female Foeticide)

Related articles: Female foeticide in India (part 1): Murder in the womb

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