The son set: Tihar jail battles pregnancy myth
NEW DELHI: It’s the mother of all superstitions. A passing fling with a life of crime and just a gentle brush with the law are all a woman needs for her reproductive outcome of choice: the birth of a son.
Urban myth has it that giving birth in Tihar jail means a woman will necessarily be blessed with a son. Jail time, it is believed, will effectively wash away all her sins, doing away with the need to visit exalted godmen or partake obscure herbal concoctions that guarantee a boy.
Driven by this belief, a 39-year-old former inmate went for a desperate act to avoid a sixth daughter: she stole her employer’s gold bangles and ` 5,000 in cash when she was four months pregnant.
“No one forced me to steal and I didn’t need those items either, but having daughters is an expensive affair. At the end of the day, they have to go to someone else’s house. If I have a son, he will at least take care of me,” said the woman living in a Janakpuri slum, requesting not to be named.
Her story, however, did not turn out as she would have liked. Having left enough clues, she managed to get herself arrested and sentenced but a four-month jail term was all she got. Released a month short of her due date, she delivered another baby girl.
“I have seen women whose sins were washed away when they spent time in Tihar and gave birth to boys. I was not so fortunate but I have accepted it as God’s will,” she said. This is not an isolated case. Several women, mostly from Delhi’s slum clusters, commit petty crimes such as theft, robbery or minor clashes to end up in Asia’s largest prison just in time for childbirth, jail statistics show. Tihar received 120 pregnant inmates last year alone. Of the 120 children delivered, 82 were girls and 38 boys. Though the 2014 figure set a record for the highest number of deliveries, Tihar is no stranger to this trend. In 2012, 45 children were delivered in the jail while in 2013, the number was 72.
The rush of pregnant women pushed jail authorities to issue a circular on January 23 this year to bust the myth.