SC LETS WOMAN ABORT 26WEEK FOETUS OVER ABNORMALITIES
NEW DELHI: A pregnant woman from West Bengal was allowed by the Supreme Court on Monday to abort her 26-week foetus suffering from grave cardiac ailments.
The decision is based on a report filed by a medical board and Kolkata’s SSKM Hospital advising an abortion.
“The medical board report clearly reveals that the mother shall suffer mental injury if the pregnancy is continued and there will be multiple problems if the child is born alive. It has categorically arrived at a conclusion that in a special case of this nature, the pregnancy should be allowed to be terminated after 20 weeks,” the court said.
A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra directed the hospital to terminate the pregnancy.
India has a strict anti-abortion law that prohibits medical termination of pregnancy after a period of 20 weeks, except when the mother’s health and life are at risk. The law is intended to prevent the practice of female foeticide, rampant in a patriarchal society obsessed with a male heir.
But the law sometimes gets in the way of rape survivors seeking to abort their unwanted child or would-be mothers carrying a diseased or malformed foetus.
In case the pregnancy crosses 20-week threshold, abortion is permitted if doctors confirm “it is necessary to save mother’s life”. The law, however, is silent on a remedy for an abnormal foetus. NEW DELHI: The lynching of Jammu and Kashmir deputy superintendent of police, Mohammed Ayub Pandith, was captured on a video which was so violent that the state government bought and destroyed it for fear of public repercussions, a top state official told HT.
The 57-year-old officer’s body was found outside Srinagar’s main mosque where thousands of people had gathered for nightlong congregational prayers on Islam’s holiest night of Shab-eQadr on June 23.
“He was stripped naked and violently pummelled. His arms and legs were bent and broken ,’’ said the top official who saw the video of Pandith’s lynching.
The official, who saw the video, said they had to work overtime to source and destroy the video for a “financial consideration”. The lynching, he revealed, had been recorded by a civilian who has been an informant of several agencies operating in the Valley.
The top official spoke to HT on condition of anonymity because of both the sensitivity of his office and the subject. HT also accessed details of the post-mortem report that testified to a high degree of violence against Pandith.