Bihar: Woman Dies During Quack Doctor's Attempt To Abort Female Foetus

A woman in the Bagha district of Bihar passed away when a quack doctor attempted to abort her female foetus. Her husband had urged the deceased woman to have a gender-detection test for their third pregnancy and after finding that the woman was carrying a girl child yet again, they attempted to terminate it.

The woman, Ragini was married to a man named Deepak Chaudhary for five years and the couple had two daughters. After she got pregnant again, Chaudhary insisted she underwent a gender-detection test from Chandrashekhar, a quack doctor from the village.

Once they realised that Ragini was pregnant with a girl child again, the quack doctor took the couple to a woman named Mamta to get an abortion performed. However, during the procedure, Ragini passed away.

Bihar Woman Dies After Failed Abortion Attempt

Chandrashekhar confessed to the police but refused to reveal the place where they had performed the gender-detection test. While the quack doctor had convinced the disease to undergo an abortion after her condition took a turn for the worse during the procedure, she was brought to the sub-divisional hospital where she was declared dead by the doctors.

After Ragini’s husband was informed about his wife’s death, he switched off his mobile phone and Ragini’s family disappeared with the body. It is being reported that both Ragini’s in-laws and maternal relatives were involved in the incident.

Sex determination tests are illegal in India due to the heinous practice of female infanticide and female foeticide that has grossly affected sex ratio in the country. Since women were being pressured into aborting female foetuses, the Indian Parliament passed the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act in 1994.

The act bans determining the sex of the foetus before birth, advertisements related to the prenatal determination of sex, as well as sex selection technologies on the unborn child.

Forced Abortion In India

Despite government's strict meassures to discourage the practice, sex determination and forced abortions of a girl child remain a common practice in our country, In a similar case, a pregnant woman died under mysterious circumstances in the Bidhuna area of the Aurraiya district in Uttar Pradesh. The woman allegedly died after her husband gave her abortion medicine. The 27-year-old Geeta Yadav got married to Vipin Yadav and had two daughters and a son together. At the time of her death, she was 5 months pregnant. Her parents alleged that her husband gave her abortion medicine which led to excessive bleeding.

Suggested Reading: Students Walk Out During Anti-Abortion Speech In University Of Michigan Medical School