JOIN USTaunted for giving birth to girls, woman ends life with 3 kids
Yet another mother, who could not withstand the humiliation from her family for not bearing a son, killed herself and her three daughters in Ambedkar Nagar district.
Thirty- year-old Neelam Verma committed suicide along with her three daughters aged between two and seven by jumping into a pond at Mamrakhapur village in the wee hours of Monday, according to reports.
Their bodies were recovered later in the day after some villagers saw them and informed the family and the police.
According to police sources, Neelam was married to Ramesh Verma about nine years ago. Neelam gave birth to three daughters and had to allegedly face taunts from her in-laws over her ‘failure' to give the family an ‘heir’.
The villagers also told police that Neelam faced humiliation for not bearing a son.
A case of harassment and abetment to suicide has been registered against her husband and in-laws.
Bodies have been sent for post-mortem, police said.
A few days ago, a 20-day-old baby girl was killed by her grandmother in Ghaziabad as she wanted a boy.
The 55-year-old granny Sheela Devi allegedly strangled Soumya and dumped her body into a nullah with the help of her younger son Rajesh.
Not only baby girls, but women giving birth to them have also been killed in the state in the past.
Recently a woman had been strangled by her husband after she had given birth to their fifth female child.
Incidents of wives being killed or thrown out after they gave birth to female babies have been reported from many parts of the state in the past few months, indicating that the girls are still considered to be a curse in the male dominated society.
Female foeticide is rampant in the state, especially the western UP districts, as a result of which the sex ratio has declined sharply there.
According to the 2011 census the sex-ratio in many districts of western Uttar Pradesh was much lower in comparison to eastern UP.
In Meerut district the sex ratio was 885:1000.
For the age group of 0-6, it is 850:1000 in Meerut, 858:1000 in Muzaffarnagar, 850:1000 in Ghaziabad and 845:1000 in Gautam Buddha Nagar.
The census data reveals that while the situation in the western UP is grim, some districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh are doing commendable job in curbing the practice of female foeticide.