Woman gets life term for killing daughter two hours after birth

The Delhi High Court on Friday sentenced a woman, who strangled her girl child to death within two hours of her birth, to life imprisonment.

The Delhi High Court on Friday sentenced a woman, who strangled her girl child to death within two hours of her birth, to life imprisonment.

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Life sentence for female infanticide is rare in India.

“She was a baby girl and her arrival was a calamity. She became their compulsion,” A bench headed by justice Pradeep Nanderjog said.

“The very thought of her marriage was enough to ruin them. She was a poor little thing and the blocking of a puff of wind was enough to put her out”.

The court observed that despite the accused being illiterate, and also from poor section of the society, it does not attract any leniency when it comes to ‘female infanticide’.

“The society had scripted her obituary much before she was born. Her mother only published it”, said the Bench upholding the sentence awarded by the trial court in 2008.

Manju was admitted at the maternity ward of Lady Hardinge Medical College and gave birth to a baby girl at around August 24, 2007.