The family of an India woman who died after an illegal sex-selection abortion have accused her in-laws of forcing her into the abortion because her baby was a girl.
Swati Jamdade, 26, died last week along with her unborn daughter at an illegal abortion practice in Maharashtra, India, according to the Times of India. The young woman’s father, Sunil Jadhav, said Swati’s husband’s parents wanted a grandson, and allegedly forced her to have the abortion after learning she was carrying a girl, according to the Daily Mail.
In a sign of his outrage, Sunil built a funeral pyre beside the in-laws’ home and cremated his daughter’s body there, according to the report.
“She was a cheerful girl, but gradually became numb,” he said. “They didn’t allow us to meet her and kept on harassing her to give birth to a boy.”
Sunil said his daughter’s in-laws lied and told him she had died of a heart attack. The man said he was “burning with anger” after the local authorities told him how his daughter really died.
Swati’s brother Amar said they want the police to put her in-laws in jail. Police already arrested her husband, according to the report.
“But we know that Swati won’t be at peace until her in-laws are put behind bars,” Amar told reporters. “We hope they remember her burning body every day for the rest of their lives. We will not stop until my sister gets justice.”
Here’s more from the report:
The in-laws were also said to have been desperate for a grandson – and took matters into their own hands after she fell pregnant with a girl for the third time.
They allegedly tortured her and, after receiving the results of a gender test, forced her to get an abortion at a clinic in a small Indian village.
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But Swati died on 1st March after going to see a homeopath for an illegal abortion.
The homeopath Babasaheb Khidrapure, 36, and Swati’s husband have now been arrested.
Police began investigating the clinic after learning of Swati’s death. Police said they found the bodies of 19 aborted baby girls dumped near the facility, leading them to believe it was performing illegal sex-selection abortions.
Authorities said there may be more baby girls’ bodies that have not been discovered yet. Police said they also have suspicions about five other medical practitioners who visited the hospital and may have been involved in illegal abortion practices.
The targeting of girls for sex-selection abortions and infanticide has become a global problem. As LifeNews previously reported, sex-selection abortions are commonplace in nations like China and India where women sometimes are forced to abort female unborn babies because of a cultural preference for boys.
In September, LifeNews reported about another gruesome case where an India woman’s in-laws allegedly poured gas on her and tried to set her on fire because they believed she was pregnant with a girl.
The 2011 India census data showed there were 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under age 7, according to the BBC. In some parts of the country, the population imbalance was even worse. For example, in the Indian state of Tiruvannamalai, men outnumbered women at a ratio of 1,000 to 878.
Indian government leaders have been trying to crack down on the discriminatory practices in different ways. Sex-selection abortions and tests to determine the baby’s sex are illegal in India. In 2015, some of the nation’s leaders also put together creative social campaigns to promote the value of girls and discourage gender discrimination.
