WUNRN
Wed
Aug 1, 2007
BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of
women marched through the streets of the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar to
protest at a growing number of cases involving female feticide, officials and
witnesses said on Wednesday.
Waving
placards that read "hang the murderers" and "spare the
girls" the demonstrators called on authorities to crack down harder on
private clinics accused of being involved in illegal sex determination and
abortion of female fetuses.
At least 14
fetuses were seized from a private clinic in central Bhubaneswar, the state
capital of Orissa, on Tuesday evening, officials said.
"We have
sealed the clinic and we are exploring all legal options at the moment,"
Amitabh Thakur, a senior police officer said on Wednesday.
Last week,
police in Orissa found 40 skulls belonging to female fetuses and newly born
babies in an abandoned well, causing a huge public outcry.
Despite laws
banning sex determination tests, one study published in the British medical
journal, the Lancet, said about 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted
in India over the last 20 years.
It is normal
for more male babies to be born than females, but India's sex ratio is one of
the world's most skewed, with an average of 933 females recorded for every
1,000 males in a 2001 census.
Boys are
traditionally preferred by parents as breadwinners and because families often
have to pay large dowries to marry off daughters.
In June, a
doctor was arrested on suspicion of illegally aborting 260 female fetuses after
police recovered bones from the septic tank in the basement of his maternity
clinic in the outskirts of New Delhi.
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