Yashoda cradled her two-day-old child in one arm. With the other, she held the child’s neck, and squeezed tight. She heard a crack.
The same day in the year 2011, she took the child to the nearest hospital, 34 kilometres away in Palacode. She wasn’t in that much of a hurry, but the medical staff were too busy to notice. The doctor pronounced the infant DOA (dead on arrival).
In the rickety, overlong bus ride back to her village, Ettiyur, she hopes her fourth child is born male. Yashoda is the fifth girl child in the family. She knows what it is to be a girl in the village. She knows what poverty can do. She didn’t need her truck driver husband or his family to force her to kill the child.
Three Years Pass
Asra Garg (IPS), the Superintendent of Police of Dharmapuri, looks at a woman hanging from the ceiling of her home, a noose tied to her neck. Suicide?
He feels something amiss, and calls for an autopsy.
The woman was poisoned by her husband, and then was hanged. After arresting the husband, SP Garg decides to reopen all cases booked under Section 174 (suicide, unnatural death) in 2014.
Pandora’s Box
Over 20 such cases turned out to be murder. Almost all of the victims were female. And most of them, infants or children. SP Garg had discovered rampant female infanticide in the area. He was determined to curb it. He was transferred to Dharmapuri in retaliation to his crackdown on the sand mafia in the state.
Dharmapuri is considered one of the most backward districts in Tamil Nadu. One where crime is often hidden from police, and the local officials are usually hand-in-glove.
Ironically, Dharmapuri is where the chieftain Naduman Anji offered sustained patronage to the female poet saint Avvaiyar, more than 2000 years ago.
Yashoda’s case was reopened. The government hospital had conducted an autopsy the same day the child was brought there. The autopsy revealed a cracked hyoid, a bone that supports the larynx (wind pipe). Yashoda was booked for murder.
Cactus, Oleander and a Few Grains of Rice
Oleander is a weed that is poisonous in all its parts. It goes by the name Arali across Tamil Nadu, where it grows wild and free. It is often a toxic protagonist in Tamil movies set in villages when the heroine decides to commit suicide out of desperation.
In 2011, a paste of oleander seeds was mixed in rice, and fed to a three-year-old girl child by the mother. She was then locked up in the house while the mother and father waited outside.
The girl vomited blood as the toxin spread through the gastrointestinal system. She then writhed in violent seizures as her nervous system was attacked. Her heart rate rose then fell well below the norm, until, 15 minutes later, the child died.
Thanks to Asra Garg’s initiative, this case of an ‘unnatural death’ too was reopened, and changed to Section 302 – murder.
Cactus milk is another common modus operandi for female infanticide. Initially, the child refuses to drink it. But then, death is swift. Mothers of girl children often leave the hospital on the very day they deliver the child. The sooner it is done, the easier it is to snuff the life out.
Not Status, but Poverty
Thirty years ago (15 June 1986), India Today conducted the first media investigation on infanticide in south Tamil Nadu. Today, the numbers have dwindled, but nothing much has changed in many rural pockets. The same methods are used.
Wrapping the child from head to toe in a wet cloth. Stuffing a few grains of rice through the nostrils. Strangulation. Starvation, while muffling the cries with a damp cloth.
Of the infanticide cases reopened by SP Garg, four of the six perpetrators of the crime were either the mother or the grandmother.
It is very rare that a girl child is killed off for reasons of status or because she is not an heir apparent.
Poverty and the accompanying fear of not being able to pay for the child’s marriage is the real reason. Which is why the first child – if it is a girl – is often spared, hoping that the next child would be a boy. ‘Why put the child and ourselves through a lifetime of suffering, when it can end in an hour or two?’ This is the sentiment that was echoed by the accused.
Sending a Clear Message
Asra Garg made sure the re-opened cases and the ensuing fresh convictions of infanticide were given prominence in local media. Department action was initiated on police officers who were found to have committed lapses. He was SP of Dharmapuri for less than six months following his reopening of the cases, before being transferred to Chennai and away from actual police work.
(This article has been republished from The Quint’s archives on the occasion of National Girl Child Day, It was first published on 4 January 2017.)
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