Marked for Death

The village grinding stones are stacked upon each other outside a straw-thatched mud hut. They are a testimony to both wheat and waste as life-giving tools and life-taking weapons. Mothers use them to grind flour for naan bread to feed their children. Mothers would also pass them around to crush the skulls of their babies...female babies.

Crude methods then became more ‘refined’ as government authorities started investigating or, more often, started looking for bribes. A variety of death schemes has now emerged. Rice with the husks still attached is often force-fed to newborn girls so that the sharp husks will slit their gullets. Toxic sap is mixed with breast milk to cause internal bleeding and death. Babies are vigorously shaken until their brains hemorrhage or spinal cords snap. Others are sealed into earthen jars to suffocate.

Further means are even more slow and deliberate. Wet blankets are used over days to cause the onset of pneumonia. Feces are mixed with milk or directly forced down the throat to promote E-coli poisoning. Many infants are simply not fed...are left to starve to death as soon as they exit the womb.

Because of ever-increasing police scrutiny, some families now even wait until a child is one or two years old until they kill her. The same child that they raise as part of the family, who plays and giggles with them, is marked for death.

Female infanticide in India is still very much a modern-day phenomenon. The preference for a male heir coupled with a debilitating female dowry system cause the slaughter of thousands of baby girls each year.

To be continued...

Comments

[Scott]

Another heartbreaking story. Helpless victims of a cruel and fallen world.

[Marcello]

that's hard to read but harder even to know it is all true and happening today.

[David]

wow......I don't even know what to say. That is so hard to take in.