Female Infanticide - The Most Brutal Form Of Murder

Girls are always considered a burden in the Indian society. People believe that the women are going to leave the family and go when they get married, so they don’t see a point in spending money on things like their education and welfare.

This is where female infanticide comes into the picture. Female infanticide is when a family kills a new born baby just because it’s a girl and they did not want a girl to be born in the family as she would be a burden on them till the day she gets married. It is also believed that if a girl is born you would have to spend a lot of money not only for the wedding but additionally pay the groom’s side a lump sum as dowry and hence it would be better for the whole family if the innocent child that was brought into this world only hours ago should be drowned and mercilessly killed.

These girl children are killed either by drowning them in a bucket of water or milk only because they were born female! In Indian society female children are always given the second priority and were always made to feel they were rather inferior to their male siblings. And this still continues to happen in villages.

In villages of rural India, girls are still not allowed even basic education and are still not allowed to go to school as her parents believe it would be better for her to learn house work and take care of her younger siblings rather than going to school and getting an education.

Female infanticide is a truth that has been staring us right in our eyes and we still do not want to acknowledge its existence. As a reason in the state of Haryana of India girls are killed off only hours after they are born and as a reason the state has a very low girl-boy ratio. And because of this precise reason women from other states are kidnapped and sold off to families in Haryana so that they can marry those men and rear children for them and this ritual of female infanticide still continues to happen in broad daylight even though it has been ruled illegal.

Many Non-profit Organisations in India have been trying to create awareness on this topic and have been trying to cut off the roots to this practices that people realise that whatever they are doing is not only morally wrong but also something that is illegal.

Slowly and steadily these awareness campaigns held in the rural parts of India have shown us some positive result but it’s a long time from now when these practices of violence against women as a gender would completely stop.