Man Accused Of Cutting Off Pregnant Wife's Belly 'To Verify Sex' Of Baby | CNN

(CNN) -

A man has been arrested after slicing through the belly of his pregnant wife with a sickle.

He supposedly wanted to find out the sex of the unborn baby.

This was stated by the police and relatives of the woman in northern India.

The attack, which occurred on Saturday, killed the baby and left the mother in critical condition.

She remains hospitalized in intensive care in the capital New Delhi, police in Budaun, Uttar Pradesh state said.

"He attacked her with a sickle and tore her stomach saying that he wanted to verify the sex of the fetus," according to the woman's brother, Golu Singh.

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The couple already have five daughters.

Police said the baby was stillborn Sunday night and the husband had been taken into custody.

India has long struggled with pervasive gender inequality and preference for sons over daughters.

Girls are often seen as financial burdens, reinforced by cultural practices such as requiring a girlfriend to provide a dowry.

"Unwanted" girls

Some couples have children until a boy is born, leading to the birth of tens of millions of "unwanted" girls, according to the 2017-18 Economic Survey.

Abortion is legal in India, but sex-selective abortions, which often target female fetuses, are not.

But even so, hundreds of thousands of female fetuses are aborted each year in India, according to the US-based NGO Invisible Girl Project.

As a result, India has one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world.

For every 107 males born in the country, there are 100 females.

According to the World Health Organization, the global natural sex ratio at birth is 105 males for every 100 females.

Even if a daughter is born, they often face higher mortality rates due to inadequate care.

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But the numbers don't tell the whole story

A 2018 study found that approximately 239,000 girls under the age of five die in India each year due to gender-based neglect.

The areas most affected by this problem are usually rural regions, with low levels of education, high population density and high birth rates.

Part of the entrenched preference stems from the rules governing inheritance, the dowry requirement, the tradition of women joining their husbands' homes, and the rituals that male children must perform.

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