A newborn baby was found inside three gunny bags on the roadside in Partapur, Shatabdi Nagar, Meerut. The infant who was left to die in the cold, allegedly by her parents, will survive, reported NDTV.
Police officer, Akhilesh Narayan, SP City told ANI, “The baby has been admitted to hospital. As per the doctor, she is fine. Investigation is underway." The baby is currently being treated in Pyarelal Hospital and is likely to survive. The police are trying to locate the parents.
“We got a call from a locality called Shatabdi Nagar that a newborn was found. A police team went there and the baby has been admitted to the district women’s hospital. She is being given proper medical treatment and doctors say she is a premature baby but healthy. All SOPs are being followed,” said officer Akhilesh Narayan to NDTV.
The baby was discovered by passersby who heard her wails and rushed to call the police for intervention. A video shows locals opening the three gunny sacks one by one to find the baby. One of the women present on the scene, was horrified, and heard saying, “What kind of parents can do such a thing”.
In Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, the government has launched several programmes to combat prevalent gender inequality in the state. Female infanticide is very common in the state, with many baby girls being abandoned after birth. Hindustan Times reported that in India, around 4,60,000 girls went missing – which means they were not born due to sex-selection biases – each year between 2013 and 2017, said the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report, The State of the World Population 2020.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)