UP cop asks wife for Rs 10 lakh to raise girl child

A senior Uttar Pradesh cop has allegedly asked his wife to bring Rs 10 lakh in dowry for the upbringing of their newborn girl child.

Jaishankar Singh’s wife Meenakshi has alleged that her husband and his family had thrown her out of their house. She was told that she would be taken back only when her parents coughed up Rs 10 lakh more as dowry.

Reason: She gave birth to a girl as her first child. Additional dowry was to meet the expenditure on the upbringing of the newborn.

Meenakshi has registered a complaint with Lucknow Police. Her father Rakesh Singh is a police personnel too. She was married to Jaishankar Singh, sub-inspector in the government railway police at Unnao, two years back. “My parents had given dowry and other household items at the time of marriage,” she said.

She added that her in-laws and her husband used to complain that she had not brought enough dowry. “Things took a turn for the worse after I gave birth to a female child last year. My husband would often beat me with his belt. He said I was a bad omen for the family as I have given birth to a girl,” Meenakshi said.

Police said a case has been registered against Singh and his family members and necessary action is being initiated. Recently, a woman had been strangled by her husband after she gave birth to their fifth female child.

A few days back a man, enraged over the birth of a third girl child, had battered his two daughters to death and thrown their bodies in a canal in UP’s Barabanki district. Such incidents indicates that girls are still considered a curse.