7 LAKH GIRLS KILLED IN WOMB EVERY YEAR IN INDIA

Seven lakh girls are killed by parents every year in India even before they are born, NHRC member and former envoy Satyabrata Pal claimed. “When a woman finds she is pregnant, anxieties set in about the sex of the unborn child. Ruthless foeticide often follows if tests that are illegal, but easy to get, show it is a girl,” Pal said while delivering the Sisir Bose Memorial lecture at Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata on January 22. The former diplomat, who was quoting UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund and formerly known as United Nations Fund for Population Activities), also quoted another statistics about 2000 yet unborn-girls meeting similar fate in the womb for the same reason.

“On a scale of cruelty, encounter deaths between security forces and gangs, are a tear drop in the ocean,” Pal said. “While 1.72 million children die in India each year before the age of one, because of our gender bias, the mortality rate is even higher for girls than boys,” he said.