Maharashtra: Doctors in Beed feed aborted female foetuses to dogs
The shocking revelation has been made by Varsha Deshpande of Lek Ladki Abhiyan, an NGO working against the practice.
Krishna Kumar Mumbai May 23, 2012 UPDATED: May 23, 2012 09:47 IST
Some
doctors in Beed are disposing of female foetuses by feeding them to dogs in order to destroy evidence of
female foeticide.
The shocking revelation was made by Varsha Deshpande of Lek Ladki Abhiyan, an NGO working against the practice.
Maharashtra's Public Health Minister Suresh Shetty also admitted he had heard of foetuses thrown to the dogs in Beed.
Deshpande's allegation is significant as Beed in Marathwada has the worst child sex ratio - 801 girls being born per 1,000 boys (2011 census) - in Maharashtra.
The low percentage of females is attributed to rampant female infanticide in the area.
Last Friday, Vijaymala Patekar (28), was admitted to Dr Sudam Munde's abortion clinic in Beed when she was six months pregnant. She had four daughters and did not want another. But while her pregnancy was being terminated, she died.
The police have arrested Munde and his wife, but Deshpande said the couple were held earlier too for the same offence and will go scot-free again because of their money power and influence.
"We don't want this case to be tried in Beed or Marathwada. Let the case be tried somewhere outside as they wield too much influence for the trial to be fair," she said.
Deshpande claimed her organisation had conducted a sting operation on the doctor in 2010, in which he openly talked about how he was aborting female foetuses and feeding them to his five dogs.
It was then that the police had arrested him, but he was released soon and continued with his activities.
"A person even saw a foetus being fed to the animals. This is known to everyone in Beed, but the police are not taking action as Munde is influential," Deshpande said.
She added that some other doctors in Beed kept dogs for the same purpose - to avoid the hassle of disposing of the bodies.
Health Minister Shetty said: "I have heard of the practice but have no evidence."
He added that since the local police seemed to be under a lot of "pressure", he had decided to ask the crime branch to investigate the latest case.
Substantiating Deshpande's account of the kind of clout enjoyed by Munde, Shetty said: "Our civil surgeon who had gone to investigate Munde's hospital was locked up in a room by some goons. They even abused her and asked her to go away."
The minister said the surgeon while trying to take action against such doctors had been facing threats for more than a year. "We have asked the home department to provide security for our staff," he said.