Vellore female infanticide case: TN to constitute special police team to probe similar cases

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Police will constitute a special team to probe female infanticide and feoticide cases in the state after a couple in Vellore was arrested for killing their baby daughter.

According to Vellore district police, Jeeva (28) and his wife Dayana (20) of Yeliur village in Vellore district were arrested on Friday for allegedly poisoning their infant daughter to death.

The couple were arrested after the father of Dayana, Saravanan filed a complaint with the Veppankulam, Station House Officer (SHO) in Vellore district that he was suspicious about the death of the infant.

In his complaint, Saravanan said that his daughter told him that the baby girl died after she bled from her nose and ear.

Unconvinced, Saravanan filed a complaint with the police and on questioning, the couple admitted to killing the child as they were expecting their second child to be a boy.

After the arrest of the couple, Tamil Nadu Police is set to constitute a special police team under a DIG level officer to probe whether other such instances were taking place in the state.

The police team will seek details from all the district police headquarters on the deaths of infant girls in the last one year.

The district police will also use the services of the District Child Protection Department and Child Welfare Committee to find out the number of infant girls in the state.

It may be recalled that in earlier years too there were several cases of female foeticide and infanticide in Vellore district.

There have been one or two cases of deaths due to milk aspiration involving female babies every month.

The Vellore district administration had already issued a missive to the district medical officers to consider second daughters as high risk babies and follow up every week at least for a month.

The district administration also issued directives to all Taluk hospitals to monitor the progress of female babies and to depute a team comprising of village nurses and technicians to monitor the growth of the child.

The state medical department has also stepped up enforcement of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 to curb female foeticide.

It may be recalled that the state police carried out a crackdown on illegal scan centres that were used for gender identification.

As many as 22 illegal scan centres were shut down in Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu a couple of years ago.

With the Vellore police registering a case of female infanticide against Jeeva and Dayana, the special police team will be checking the antecedents of those who were involved in operating illegal scan centres and a detailed study will be carried out on the abortions and Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) carried out in the past one year in each district.

A senior officer with Tamil Nadu Police headquarters while speaking said, “The focus will be on the recent deaths of infant girls whose parents have a first girl child. The MTP cases will also be studied in detail and the team will probe whether abortions were undertaken by women who had a first girl child.”