Writer and researcher Gita Aravamudan describes how female babies were killed in villages in India:
“Female infanticide I found had become more “scientific”. Inducing pneumonia was the modern method. The infant was wrapped in a wet towel or dipped in cold water as soon as it was born or when it came back home from the hospital. If, after a couple of hours, it was still alive it was taken to a doctor who would diagnose pneumonia and prescribe medicine, which the parents promptly threw away. When the child finally died, the parents had a medical certificate to prove pneumonia. Sometimes the infant was fed a drop of alcohol to create diarrhea: another “certifiable disease.”
Gita Aravamudan Disappearing Daughters: the Tragedy of Female Foeticide (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books India, 2007)22
They did this because bodies could be exhumed so killing had to be done stealthily
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