Man finds baby while burying his daughter

A MAN digging a grave in northern India found a newborn girl buried alive, police said on Monday, in the latest case to shine a spotlight on female infanticide.

Hitesh Sirohi had gone to bury his daughter, who died a few minutes after birth on Wednesday, when his spade hit an earthen pot, police in India’s Uttar Pradesh state said.

“When he not iced a newborn girl inside it, he immediately rescued her and dialed for help.”

Sirohi told the Times of India he found the baby wrapped in a cloth and crying.

“At one point I thought that my daughter had come alive. But the voice was coming from the pot,” he told the Times.

The newborn was taken to a loca l hospita l where she is receiving medical care, police said, adding t hat a loca l polit ic ia n was pay i ng for her expenses.

I nd ia ha s long st r ug g led w i t h f e ma l e i n f a nt i c i de, wh ich ha s bec ome w idespread because of pa rent s’ preferences for sons – who are v iewed as invest ments a nd heirs – while girls are seen as a liabi lit y.

India is trying to bridge the sex ratio gap with tough laws, as the country fares badly with 940 females for every 1,000 males according to the 2011 census.

Prenatal sex determination was out lawed i n 1994 but f a mi l i e s’ s t i l l u s e i l l e g a l met hods or dev ices to discover the gender and terminate pregnancies for unwanted female of fspring.

A 2011 study in t he British medica l jou r na l The Lancet found t hat up to 12 mil lion girls had been aborted in the last t hree decades in India.

In January, a three-week-old baby girl was found buried alive in Rajasthan state after locals heard her crying from a shallow grave. She died after a few weeks at a hospital.

In 2017, pol ice i n wester n Maharashtra state recovered 19 fema le foet uses f rom a sewer near a medical clinic.

A doctor was arrested and charged wit h illega lly aborting fema le foetuses for desperate parents.