Another horrific gang-rape and forced abortion is being reported this week in India.
Police in in the northern city of Bulandshahr said they are investigating the case involving a teenage girl who reported being raped by a neighbor, the news website Biharprabha reports. Reports call the case a gang-rape, but they only mention one person, the neighbor, as an alleged attacker. Police are just beginning the investigation, so many details still are unclear.
The girl said she was raped by the neighbor five months ago; however, he threatened her and demanded that she keep it a secret, Catch News reports. The teenager said she kept quiet because was afraid and ashamed, but her mother recently learned about her pregnancy.
Reports say when the teen’s mother found out about the assault, she went to the alleged attacker’s home and confronted his mother. The news reports say the teen later was forced to abort her unborn child, though there is no indication about who forced her. One report said the neighbor’s family paid the teen to have the abortion.
Dharmendra Yadav, a local police official, told Catch that they obtained the aborted baby’s body as part of the investigation. The state health department also is investigating the facility where the abortion was performed, according to the report.
Police became involved only after other villagers reported the matter to them, according to the report.
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Violence against women and girls, including the unborn, is a major problem in India and other Asian cultures. Sex-selection abortions and infanticide prompted by a cultural preference for boys have led to a highly disproportionate male-to-female population. In the Indian state of Tiruvannamalai, for example, men outnumber women at an unnatural ratio of 1,000 to 878, the New Indian Express reported recently.
Rape and other violent attacks on women also appear to be escalating in India. Some speculate that the rape crisis could be one of the consequences of sex selection abortion.
“The sex ratio imbalance directly leads to more sex trafficking and bride buying,” says Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, told Time in 2013. “At this point, we’re talking correlation, not causation. More studies need to be done….[But] it is clear from historical cases and from studies looking at testosterone levels that a large proportion of unmarried men in the population is not a good thing.”
Gender discrimination has become such a huge problem in India that doctors are prohibited from telling parents the sex of their unborn baby.
