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Female foetuses recovered

Aligarh: Less than two weeks after the discovery of about 50 female foetuses from a well in Patiala in Punjab, authorities here have found a dozen embryos dumped in a pond.

Residents of the Nai Basti locality noticed stray dogs feeding on the female foetuses contained in plastic bags and informed the authorities.

Following the discovery, the administration has ordered a crackdown on all private maternity nursing homes, a large number of which are suspected to be conducting illegal abortions.

A delegation of local women doctors on Monday met State Minister Khwaja Haleem and alleged that the police were `harassing' them after this incident.

Haleem later told PTI that all private maternity hospitals have been given a week's time to get registered.

He added that the State Government was formulating a law to curb such illegal practices in the State in the wake of reports that the male-female ratio had skewered `alarmingly' in recent years due to female foeticide. On August 9 scores of female foetuses were unearthed from the backyard of a private district hospital in Patiala run by a retired Army personnel and his wife. In the backdrop of the shocking discovery, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his Indpendence Day address had said female foeticide must be stopped to eliminate gender disparities. PTI

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