Newborn rescued from shallow grave as India murders its daughters

'The baby was buried upside down.'

A rash of baby deaths has hit India, where baby boys are prized and coddled while baby girls are buried alive.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to the India Times, a local of the Jajpur district of Odisha, was walking along a road when they noticed a pair of tiny feet protruding from the soil.

Upon closer inspection and a bit of digging, Alok Ranjan Rout realized the feet belonged to a newborn child.

Rout, told The Indian Express: "The baby was buried upside down. She was wrapped in cloth. We found two small feet above the ground and believed that the baby was alive."

The infant was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she is reported to be in critical condition.

Chintamani Mishra, a Medical officer of Dharmasala CHC, stated: "An ASHA worker of Anjira panchayat came to at the CHC with the rescued baby girl. The newborn is believed to be between 4-6 hours old. The girl was in a critical condition. We immediately started her treatment and stabilised her condition."

Chief medical officer of the Jajpur district, Fanindra Kumar Panigrahi, told AFP: "She is doing fine and all her parameters are normal. She is a full term baby, weighing around 2.5 kg. Her umbilical cord was intact and body was still covered with vernix."

The hospital staff named the girl Dharitri, a Sanskrit word meaning, "the earth."

The identities of her parents remain unknown and Dharitri will be handed over to the state-run child welfare committee after she is discharged from the hospital.

Authorities reported the child was either abandoned by her parents due to her gender, or the mother was an unmarried woman.

Local police officer Jyoti Prakash Panda told Inquirer: "We are trying to track the parents of the girl. Chances are it was a case of female feticide and it is clear that the accused wanted to kill her."

According to the last official census in 2011, there were 940 female births for every thousand male babies born.

The country has banned the preferential treatment and illegal abortions for parents who are desperate for male babies but that hasn't stopped families from killing their newborns.

According to a 2016 study, the number of female children in India has sharply declined since the beginning of 2001.

There are an estimated three million girls "missing," due to the ongoing selective sex discrimination.

Bodies belonging to baby girls have been recovered in a variety of sites, including shallow graves, which attract wild animals.

Please pray for change in India. Pray for women's rights, empowerment and an end to the senseless slaughter of innocent life.

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