Catholic World News News Feature

Baby boy for sale: bizarre crime shows India's deep-seated gender bias January 28, 2009

In yet another shocking incident that illustrates the deep-rooted prejudice against female children in India's society, police have arrested four people in connection with the attempted sale of a newborn baby boy in the northern Punjab state.

Balwinder Singh and his wife Sonia of Jalandhar had allegedly struck a deal with an agent to sell their 4th child even before he was born, after an illegal sex-determination test showed the child to be male. The child was sold in December, soon after his birth, to a businessman desperate for a male child. The price was RS100,000 ($2,050)-- although the agent apparently paid only half the promised amount to the parents.

Unable to recover the remaining amount, the couple filed a kidnapping charge against the agent. Following an investigation, police uncovered the whole scheme and arrested all four participants on January 24.

While male children are highly valued in India, newborn girls are frequently abandoned at hospitals, and orphanages have great difficulty finding adoptive parents. Moreover, sex-selection abortion remains common in India despite new laws designed to eradicate the practice. The federal government estimates that 10 million girls are "missing" from India's population over the past two decades because of these sex-selection abortions.

Male children are especially desired because of Hindu beliefs requiring a son to perform the last rites in order for his father to attain moksha, or salvation. The bias is aggravated by heavy dowry demands made upon the marriage of Indian women.

The Punjab state, in which this story unfolded, has one of the most heavily skewed gender ratios in India, with several regions within the sate having fewer than 800 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6.