Marital Incompatibility on Steroids

"If, despite all the evidence I have, the accused are allowed to escape then no other women will ever try to prosecute for this type of crime."
"Ultrasounds in India always happen behind closed doors because every doctor knows it's a crime and will never give the results in writing."
"They didn't say anything to me, but afterwards it was clear that my husband and my in-laws knew that I was carrying girls. After that, they began badgering me to have at least one of them killed. They told me we could not bring up two girls, we would not be able to afford to get them married."
"He threw me out of the house because he wants to remarry someone who can give him a son.""Even as an educated woman I am pushed around. But my daughters are now my biggest source of happiness, and I am proud that I have saved them."
Mitu Khurana, 39, pediatrician, Jaipur, Rajasthan

Mitu Khurana (right), from Jaipur, claims her husband Kamal (left) secretly asked doctors to take an ultra-sound of her babies while she was in hospital with a stomach complaint in 2004

China and India, each representing huge countries geographically and each having over a billion people (1.3-billion and 1.2-billion respectively) undertook to persuade their citizens to have fewer children; China with a one-child-only per family law, India with forced sterilization. In both countries boy babies were considered to be more desirable than girl babies and the result has been the abortion of female foetuses with a resulting gender imbalance causing social havoc in both countries. 

 

China has relented on its one-child coercion, and India has made ultrasounds illegal.

Social and cultural biases cannot be changed so readily to meet a new climate of enlightenment, however, and ultrasounds are still taking place, illegally. Dr. Mitu Khurana has fought a long legal battle over an ultrasound that was done at her husband's behest without her knowledge when she was pregnant with twin girls. She had experienced an allergic reaction and was taken to hospital, given sedatives and a kidney scan taken. Her husband took advantage of the opportunity to convince colleagues to take an ultrasound.

 

The 39-year-old paediatrician refused to abort the twins and is involved in a 'landmark' legal fight at India's high court

Dr. Kamal Khurana, her husband, has denied his wife's allegations. This is, in fact, the first time that such charges have ever been brought to an Indian court. But it is an important struggle for very basic human rights. It has been estimated that 12 million female foetuses were aborted in India through a period of 30 years. An investigation of 89 hospitals n Delhi alone discovered birthrate discrepancies of great proportions. In one instance, 285 girls were delivered for every 1,000 boys.

 

The United Nations made note of the situation and concluded that the number of violent sex crimes so common in India may very well be partially related to the dwindling number of Indian girls in the population, a shortage that has reached "emergency proportions". The lawsuit that Dr. Khurana brought both against her husband and the Jaipur Golden Hospital was thrown out recently by a lower court, citing a lack of evidence.

 

Dr. Khurana described the untenable situation she faced after the 2004 ultrasound had been taken without her permission, and against the law, in a collusion between her husband and other doctors at the hospital. Her husband afterward began insisting she have an abortion and was often violent in his behaviour; once, she stated, pushing her down a set of stairs. When she asked for medical help, her husband responded by confining her with "the intention to induce abortion".

 

It was her parents who brought her to hospital the next morning. Her twin girls, Guddi and Pari, were born some time later, prematurely at 31 weeks' gestation. They are now ten years of age. Dr. Khurana says that when one of her little girls was only four months old her mother-in-law had attempted to push the child down a staircase. Her husband denied the girls could have been his; he had been informed by a priest that he would have a son. He insisted that a DNA test be undertaken.