India. A baby found alive in a pot buried underground

A newborn was found alive but buried underground in India on Thursday, October 10, by a man digging a grave to bury the body of his dead baby. The child has been hospitalized but remains in critical condition.

A newborn baby girl was Tuesday in critical condition in India after being found buried alive, according to police and medical sources, a drama highlighting the scourge of female infanticide in the South Asian country.

Last Thursday in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Hitesh Sirohi, a shopkeeper, was digging a grave for his own daughter, stillborn the day before, when his shovel met a buried pot. "When he realized that there was a newborn baby inside, he immediately rescued her", told AFP the local police.

According to the testimony of the man daily Times of India, the baby was wrapped in a cloth and cried."At one point, I thought my daughter had come back to life. But the voice actually came from the pot "he told the newspaper.

The infant is currently hospitalized and her medical expenses are paid by a local politician, the police said. The girl is in critical condition, according to her doctors.

Scourge

Female infanticide is an old scourge in India, where girls are seen as a financial burden for the family, while boys are seen as investments that will eventually support their parents. India is trying hard to fill the girls' deficit in the country, with a gender ratio of 940 women per 1,000 men in the last census in 2011.

Since 1994, doctors have forbidden to reveal to parents the sex of the future baby, but families still resort to illegal means to know the gender of the fetus and to abort if they discover that they are expecting a girl.

A study published in 2011 in the scientific journal The Lancet estimated that 12 million female fetuses had been aborted in the previous three decades in India.

Fetuses in the sewers

In January, a three-week-old girl was found buried alive in Rajasthan after residents heard her crying. She died a few weeks later in the hospital.

In 2017, police in the state of Maharashtra (West) recovered 19 female fetuses in a sewer near a clinic. Authorities arrested and charged a doctor for performing illegal abortions on behalf of parents desperate for a boy.

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India. A baby found alive in a pot buried undergroundOuest-France.fr

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