Foetus in Orissa killed for just Rs 5,000

The cost of killing a foetus is just Rs 5,000 and it does not matter whether it is male or female, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 2, 2007, 20:53:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The cost of killing a foetus in Orissa is just Rs 5,000 and it does not matter whether it is male or female, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has found.

The commission, in its report on foeticide cases in Nayagarh area of Orissa, had said some of the 137 foetus found were of the boys. “We are waiting for forensic results to know the exact number of male foetus killed,” Sandhya Bajaj, commission member, who conducted the inquiry, said. “In their lust to earn money the parents were mislead about sex of the child,” she added.

Most of the ultra-sound machines were of poor quality and not capable of revealing the gender of the foetus in the early stage of pregnancy, the committee found. But, to earn quick buck the parents were advised to opt for abortion irrespective of whether it was boy or a girl, Bajaj said.

The six clinics inspected were not having the mandatory license to operate the ultra sound machines under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, the report said. Even among government functionaries the awareness about the Act was very low.

To get clients, some of the private clinics were also found to be running a highly disparaging campaign against the girl child. The six clinics inspected by the committee used to tell people spend Rs 5,000 now or Rs five lakh at the girl’s marriage, the committee has said. And, the women used to be the target group of the campaign.

The commission found the whole operation to be well oiled racket with foetus being dumped into a man-made well and then treated with chemicals for faster decay. “Effort was made to clean all evidence but few blood stains were also found,” Bajaj said.

The two doctors, prima facie, involved were on government rolls and used to recommend the patients to their private clinics for sex determination tests. “It was there in small two room shady clinics that the abortion was done,” Bajaj revealed.

Recommending strict criminal action against the doctors, the committee has asked the Orissa government to conduct a state-wise survey about the private nursing homes involved in the racket. “We have asked them to submit a status report on number of ultra sound machines running without license within a month,” she said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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