She fought for INDIA`s Unwelcome DAUGHTERS

She Fought for India`s disappearing daughters

(google translation is as follows- as the document is in swedish)

Text and photo:
Stina linde

30-year MITU Khurana  step out of the house after having carried out one of her four-month-old
twin daughters into the taxi. Now she has decided.
She intends to leave her in-laws' home and arranged marriage. Her own parents are waiting for her home. They are also convinced about the harassment of their daughter and two grandchildren has to
stop.

Known throughout India The scene that played in front MITU
when she comes in through the front door to pick up her second daughter has
followed her all since then. Mother in law has set the infant in car seat on
the top step. With full power kicks her chair down the stairs.

Since the incident in December 2005, pediatrician MITU Khurana from New Delhi in India has
become widely known. She has appeared on television, in newspapers, on blogs and
even in India's counterpart for Guinness record book. The reason: she is the
first person ever in India to file a case under PNDT act

Police have notified her husband and her in-laws for trying to force her to sex selective
abortion.

- To go out in the media is the only way for me to get anywhere with my cases. In addition it
makes our life safer. I am threatened from many sources and to become a public
person gives me and my daughters more protection and support, she says.

Hundreds of thousands of female fetuses are aborted every year in India.

Ultrasound and other technologies help parents to find out the sex of their expected child.

MITU Khurana is the first
Indian woman who dared notify authorities against her husband and mother in law
because they tried to force her to abort her twin girls.

In India,mainly in the northern parts, is so called Son-preference. This means that sons has much higher status than daughters at all levels.

In addition to this preference for sons is contempt against daughters, leading to multi-sided
discrimination. There is an old pattern-

States that have multiple causes.

Cultural
differences

Obsession of
the sons of India is partly due to cultural traditions. One example is that
only sons be able to pass on the family name, because daughters belong to her
husband's family after they are married. Therefore, like most families that
they need at least one son.

Another
tradition is that the son is the only one who can light the fire when their
parents are cremated.

Sons are
therefore strongly associated with status.

In some cases,
a woman who has just given birth to daughters is considered childless.

The economic
factor is strongly contributing to the contempt against daughters. They are considered
be a financial burden on parents,mainly because of the dowry that they must pay
when she gets married and also because she of the traditions she will not

able to support
their parents in old age.

It is the son's
duty. He is a social protection network for parents, while the daughter has all
duties towards her in-laws.

Like so many in
India, MITU Khurana
marriage was arranged,and after marriage she moved back home to her husband's
parents. She and her husband, who is also a doctor, met hardly at all before
the wedding.

It was not long
before MITU Khurana became pregnant. Mitu`s
husband and his mother told her to go to a clinic to find out if she was
expecting a boy or girl. MITU
refused. She is raised in a family where you differentiated  in boys and girls and her parents gave her and
her sister equal opportunities to develop as if theyhad been sons.

After sixteen
weeks of pregnancy had gone, had MITU
Khurana was told
that she was expecting twins. But she still refused to find out the child's
gender. One day she was

Her husband on
asking of his mother, who very knew that MITU is difficult allergic to eggs. She had
therefore deliberately added eggs in cake she gave her and MITU had a serious allergic
reaction. She was taken to hospital for investigation.

The doctor took
her to childbirth Department and explained that he would do an ultrasound on
her kidneys.

- I sensed that
something was amiss when I was to the maternity ward. But it was not

until later
that I found evidence that the was when they found out the sex of my twin

fetuses . My
in-laws and my husband had paid the doctor to do so when they took me for
allergy shock.

When the
in-laws and her husband came to know that MITU was carrying two girls they put great
stress on her. She was harassed physically and mentally.

One day when
pregnancy lasted about 20 weeks her husband began to nag at her to have an
abortion. MITU
explained to him that she would not go along with it. She already loved his
children and the fact that they were girls played no role whatsoever. But her
husband did not give up, it were fighting and he threw her down the stairs that
led to ground floor.

MITU had heavy bleeding and was taken to hospital, terrified
of losing their children. Fortunately, both the daughters survived. But her in-laws
and her husband did not stop trying to provoke a miscarriage. When she came
home from the hospital, they locked

her in a room
without food and water.

In August 2005,
MITU , was seven
months pregnant, give birth to their daughters by caesarean section. The girls
did well, but of course she was brought home and lived at home with her parents
they first few months.

When the girls
become four months old, she decided, however, to move back to her in-laws.- I
still wanted at all costs save my marriage. It is difficult to explain this in afterwards,
but I loved the fact remains my husband. I also thought that they should accept
the girls now that they were born, explains she said.

But after four
days of continued harassment MITU
Khurana called her
mother, who

arranged for a
taxi to come and get her.

- My mother in
law knew that I was going to give me of the girls. She offered to carry

down one of
them to the taxi but I could never guessed that she had intended to kill her
granddaughter.

Thanks to the
child seat of hard plastic and that four months old girl was strapped in carrying
cot and that she had a belt around it, so she escaped without major damage. It
was after her mother in law had kicked her daughter down the stairs as MITU Khurana contacted police.

Outside
this  penchant for sons is a contempt against
daughters, which leads to versatile dis-exposure.

"No,
do not give up!

You
must bring this fight.

it
is too our behalf also ".

INDIA

CAPITAL New Delhi

LARGEST CITY bombay

LANGUAGE Hindi, Tamil,
Sanskrit,

English and 20
other

GOVERNMENT Federal republic

SURFACE 3,287,590 km 2

POPULATION 1,210,193,422

Religion Hindu 82%,Muslims
12%, Christian 2%;Sikh 2%

LANGUAGE English dominates
as a business language. Hindi spoken as a first language by 30%.

Source:
Wikipedia

Bijayalaxmi exciting
look out over the group with teachers who are lined up on the red plastic
chairs in the basement next to the school library Apoteket. She is the women's
rights activist and one of founders of the organization capf, campaignagainst
Pre-Birth Elimination of Female .

The was here MITU Khurana for the first time felt that she could
get help with his case.

Today is
Bijayalaxmi in a workshop for teachers at primary school Vidya Niketan in South
Delhi.

The audience
sits around twenty female teachers, but only two men. In India, it is

uncommon for
men to work as primary school teachers, it is considered a female profession.
As one of several speakers, it Bijayalaxmi Nanda task to tell the teachers
about the Indian law against sex-selective abortion.

- There is nothing
wrong with the law as such. It is well written and does a total ban on both
design and advertising of sex-selective abortion. The problem is that the law
is not followed, and the who violate the criminal does not, she says.

FACTS
AND PRENATAL preconception DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES ACT

It
was during the 1970s - and '80s as hospitals and clinics in India began
offering sex determination  of fetuses
with ultrasound or amniocentesis, and abortion do so if it should prove to the fetus
was female. The phenomenon was called the Female foeticide. Since 1971,
abortion is legal in country, but the new technology contributed to the now
almost entirely aborted female fetuses. in the early 1980s, many of the clinics
that specialized in sex determination and abortion exponentially and they
earned big money. some offer combined gender test and abortion at a reduced
price. ten years later there were around 2,000 clinics only in the capital,
Delhi. government realized that the abuse of ultrasound would have serious
consequences. 1996 came because a law against sex selective abortion in force. preconception
and prenatal Diagnostic techniques act, pCpnDt, as the law units, prohibit  any form of prenatal gender determination.
Clinics and doctors can not inform about the gender of a unborn child and the
parents may not ask about it. It is also forbidden to advertise these services
and under the legal text is the punishment up to five years in prison.
hospitals that have ultrasound machines must register them and they may only be
used for verification of fetal health. Moreover, it is by law to have a visible
sign that both the English and the local language explaining that sex
determination is illegal and punishable.

Teachers at
school if new abortion law illegal ultrasound

Although MITU now moved away from
in-laws,so she visited them twice a week. The was when she went through her and
her husband old things in their former home that she found a document from the
hospital where she was admitted to the allergic reaction. There was that an
ultrasound was done. But not why.

- When you do
ultrasound, you have to fill in a form that explains the exact reasons

to the survey.
It was missing in this document.

Now the MITU evidence of her
swearing-parents, husband and the doctor had breached

Law on sex
determination of fetuses and 2008 She notified them of the crime. She Skaffade
to a lawyer and began to present evidence. Thus she became the first person ever
actually using the law that had existed for fourteen years.

The last two
years have been heavy for MITU
Khurana . She has
been forced to resign from her job as a pediatrician. Instead, she reads a college
course in Hospital and Health Management.

When she was a
few months ago broke down on

Because of the
press, she wanted to close the case. But then protested her classmates.

- They are ten,
twelve years younger than me and has so much energy. They say, 'No, do not give
up!

You must keep
this fight. It is our sake also. "

Now her class have
run a campaign with the help of petitions on the streets. In the short time around
ten thousand people signed up

MITU Khurana struggle.

- I've actually
given up many times. But then I look at my daughters and suddenly remember why
I do this. They give my confidence back.

- Dad will take
care of my daughters and give me full support in everything I do. I thank my
parents parents, my daughters and my classmates.

And I thank my
husband because he has been me to start this fight!

Than is Mitus
case far from settled and will be addressed in higher courts. She has been
threatened by all sorts, including the police.

- My case is
corrupt at all levels. The vast Most are against me, there are not many wants
me to get right. But I hope more vulnerable women should follow my example.

Mitus husband
is fighting for its part to get right to the custody of the children.
Meanwhile, he deny that they really are his children.

- When they
were born, he asked for a DNA test to check that he was the father. A

astrologer had
told him that he only would have sons. He wants custody only for he knows that
the twins are my life, they are all I have says MITU .

•

Stina Linde is graduate
journalist from Lund.

She has
previously studied Human rights and to write about these
issues close to her heart. A married relatives will from
India and Stina have
visited the country several

times. It was
during work on an essay in Human Rights that the idea to write
about

India's
unwanted daughters came to.

capf formed in
the early 2000s and had the ambition to be a moral support for women who face
pressure to make abortion or sex fetus. When MITU Khurana
contacted Bijayalaxmi Nanda had neither she or anyone else in the organization
before

tried to
enforce a court case.

- It's an open
secret that the selective abortion in progress on a large scale and that lots
of women nor pressed into it. Everyone knows what clinicians performing the
illegal, though it is not spoken highly of it.

When
Bijayalaxmi Nanda told if Mitus cases, there is one last point on program
before today's workshop is over.

She divides
teachers into four groups and give them the task of agreeing on how they

the best way to
get school children aware of discrimination against daughters and girls.

- The most
important thing for you, in the role of teachers, is to tell the kids how
things are in our society. We must catch them before they get same view of
girls and boys, most people