Disappearing daughters

Girl children are methodically murdered in cold blood across the feudal terrain of Morena while illegal sex determination clinics bloom

Akash Bisht Morena

For decades, Morena district in Madhya Pradesh has been in news for all the wrong reasons. Famous for its dreaded Chambal ravines where legendary dacoits ruled the roost, lately, it has become one of the many districts in India with the lowest sex ratio. Only 35 km from Gwalior, where sundry ex-maharajas, queens and princes still call the shots, Morena has, in the recent past, witnessed an unusual surge in the number of clinics with crores being spent on modern ultrasound machines and other medical testing facilities that mushroom all over this arid, backward town. Signboards prominently announcing 'sex determination is not done here and female foeticide is a crime punishable under the law' can be seen outside every clinic. Uncannily, most of these dubious clinics are doing precisely that.

“It is ironic that sex determination and abortion are being done in most of these clinics displaying these boards,” points out a local journalist. The sex ratio of the entire district is 842 while in some blocks it is as low as 500-600. Many villages in some blocks have no females, or just a handful of girl children. Villages near Morena are dominated by the Gujjars and Thakurs. Whenever any woman in the family or community becomes pregnant they inevitably visit the town to do a sex determination test. If it's a boy there are celebrations; if it's a girl there is collective mourning. They believe that a girl child would only bring problems and prefer to abort it with the help of either the local daayi (mid-wife) or doctors who are minting money by brazenly violating the law.

Morena district has a dismal sex ratio of 842 which is among the lowest in the country. Experts working in the field say that these figures are not confirmed and the figure in some blocks are as low as 400. “This figure is of the entire district. If you go to certain villages dominated by the Gujjar and Rajput communities, the ratio is much lower than that of the district. In Kailaras and Pahadgarh blocks, more than 100 villages have a sex ratio lesser than 600, while in Jaura block it is even lower than 500,” informs Asha Singh, legal adviser to Jagosakhi, a non-governmental organisation working in the district.

The streets of Morena are testimony to this glaring disparity; there are very few girls visible in public places. They are absent on the roads and markets and rickshaws taking school children home are full of boys. A rikshaw-puller was cryptic, “Agar ladkiyan hongi tab to dikhengi, ladki sab chahte hain lekin apne nahin padosi ke ghar main (There are hardly any girls and hence can't be seen. Everyone wants a girl, not in their home but that of their neighbours.)”

The absence of girls is stark. On one of his official visits, former district magistrate, Dr Manohar Agnani, visited an aaganwadi centre in one of the villages. He noticed that there were no girls in this centre. He was told that there are hardly any girls in the village. Shocked with this revelation, Agnani wanted to know the reason behind it. On his instruction a team of district officials did a door-to-door survey in a village and found an alarmingly adverse child sex ratio. When the team discussed this with the villagers they disclosed the uncanny truth: sex determination was widespread and entrenched through sonography and if the foetus is that of a girl child it's inevitably terminated. They also revealed the names of several doctors and clinics who run this organised and illegal business of sex determination and abortion.

On Agnani's instruction, records of these clinics and diagnostic centres were seized and checked and it was found that most of these clinics were not filling up the mandatory 'Form F' mentioned in the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention Misuse) Act (PNDT Act). “Under the PNDT Act, performing a test for the purpose of sex determination is a cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable offence and punishable with a jail-term of up to five years and a fine of Rs 5 lakh,” informed Asha Singh.

District-level authorities scrutinised the records of these clinics and found that several clinics were not following the guidelines of the PNDT Act especially while filling up the mandatory 'Form F'. This form provides vital information: the number of children with sex of each child, reason for which ultrasound was done, results of ultrasonography, if any abnormality in the foetus has been detected, if Medical Terminantion of Pregnancy (MTP) was advised, and if yes, on what date it was carried out. 'Form F' also seeks information on whether the doctor did a sex determination test and did he disclose it to anyone, and a declaration by the pregnant woman that she does not want to know the sex of the child. After these startling revelations, the chief medical and health officer issued show cause notices to these clinics and doctors. Subsequently, licences of seven such clinics were cancelled in February 2005. Ironically, most of these licences were restored later and the clinics are back in business.

In May, 2005, restoring the licences, the local court said that not filling 'Form F' can't be the only reason to cancel their licences while the PNDT Act says that it is mandatory to fill the form or else licences of such clinics should be cancelled. Once their licences were restored, these clinics decided not to fill the form to save themselves from legal complications. Even if they fill the form, they mention vague addresses and unreliable information that make it difficult for the authorities to trace their customers.

However, these raids and continuous vigilance has made the dubious sections of the medical fraternity of Morena more discreet. Now they have adopted measures through which it is difficult to nab them. “The medical fraternity involved in these heinous crimes has become cautious. Now it is the middlemen — nurses, ward boys and medical practitioners — who have taken over. They operate clandestinely in the night and it has become difficult to catch them. “They do the abortions in the night and ask the woman to leave early morning,” said a social activist. Locals report that there are many clinics in the city that are shut in the day but start functioning when the town goes to sleep.

Regular raids and constant vigilance has also led to higher costs for those who want to kill the girl child. Earlier, sex determination and abortion would cost around Rs 500 while now it has ballooned to Rs 5,000. Some clinics have also started referring their customers to Gwalior, Jhansi, Agra and Delhi. “Even in poorer rural areas, families are willing to spend a significant chunk of their income on travelling to sex-test centres in towns to detect the gender of the foetus,” said Mary John of the Centre for Women's Development Studies in New Delhi. “Doctors now refer their 'patients' to doctors in other cities. They are later informed by the middlemen about the sex of the child and it is left to them whether they want to abort it or not,” confirms Mayank Tomar,” a local reporter with Dainik Bhaskar.

Higher costs has created a desperate phenomenon: that of hiring a local aaya or dai who are not trained to carry out such operations. “These aayas use primitive methods for abortion and these lead to multiple complications. I know of a case where a woman died after she had an abortion with the help of an aaya,” said Asha Singh.

In Mandsaur district, on December 22, private and government doctors went on a strike and sent a letter to the district magistrate stating that they were not happy with the way she had been acting against them in context of the PNDT Act. The striking doctors were led by the districts CMHO who herself owns an ultrasound machine and had been under the scanner of the officials who are investigating and scrutinising her clinic's records.

Earlier this month M Geeta, sealed six machines and restored three of them later because they had nothing to do with sex determination and were not being used in any such tests in their respective clinics. However, the rest still remain sealed and their records are being looked into. She has been receiving threats since then, she calls it a part of her job. Geeta explains, “The only issue I have with these clinics is that they are not filling in the F-Form systematically so that medical and social audit can be done. Similar to Morena and certain other districts vague addresses are being filled in and when asked they say that since most of our customers come from villages, they can't provide their addresses.”

Apart from this, female infanticide is also a contributing factor. Stories of new born girls with tobacco stuffed in their mouth and killing them by placing heavy objects on their heads, using pillows to suffocate them, or even burying them, still haunt the district.

The primary reason for people using such ghastly methods is that girls are considered a financial liability and an inferior species. Plus, the desire for a male child is obsessive, in what is clearly a feudal, patriarchal and male-dominated society. A senior police official said, “I have a daughter who is an engineer. The problem is that I will have to pay an enormous amount of dowry because the more educated the girls are in this area more is the demand for dowry.” All senior officials and activists point out that if these trends continue then that day is not far off when there will be no girls in this district. This will eventually result in trafficking of girls from other states, or buying them off by doling out paltry sums, especially poor girls and women, and turn them into domestic slaves plus wives, as is currently widespread across the rural interiors of Punjab and Haryana.

Geeta says it is a very conservative community that we work with and it is difficult to make these people realise what we are addressing. “They think of themselves as intellectuals and don't want anyone to intefere in their matters and if someone does he/she has to face all kinds of pressures and threats,” informs Geeta. There have been numerous instances where district officials have been pressurised and even threatened with dire consequences. Officials working in these hostile districts believe that there is money and big names are involved in it. They opine that there is a powerful nexus of doctors and politicians and if you hurt their interests then they will strike back with vengeance. “These things keep happening, are a part of our job and they add on to our experience,” says Geeta.

To save the girl child, they say, the doctors have to be more sensitive and ethical. They shouldn't betray their profession and should save lives rather than eliminate them. More crucial is social awareness and women's empowerment: the inherent bias and the persistent brutality against the female gender must be eliminated from this oppressive male-centric society. Yes the rule of law should be upheld.

However, as of now, in Morena, this seems a distant dream.