An Extraordinary Story Of A Mom Of 2 Girls Who Smashes Sex Determination, Foeticide
An Extraordinary Story Of A Mom Of 2 Girls Who Smashes Sex Determination, Foeticide
We Indians worship women in many forms and believe that they are Shakti, the other
signifcant part of Shiva without whom he is incomplete. Yet the society’s reality
reveals a completely different picture. People still believe that only their son can carry
the family’s name forward and consider their daughters as a liability to be married off
and sent to another family.
As heartbreaking this fact is, the numbers are even more disturbing. In 2011 census,
the number of girl child per 1000 boy child has declined from 927 to 919. No matter
how much we boast the slogans of Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, the sad reality is that
ever year, female foeticide takes more than half a million lives of girl child even before
they are born.
A girl till the age of fve is the most vulnerable even after her birth. Many would argue
that such mindset is the thing of past and is now seen only in backward or rural areas
where people are not educated. For those people, the story of Dr Mitu Khurana is an
eye-opener. She is the frst woman to file a complaint on sex determination and fght
against all the odds to save her daughters.
Forced sex determination and abortion
Hailing from a well-educated family of doctors Mitu Khurana herself is a pediatrician.
She married in 2004 to an orthopedic surgeon. From the beginning, Mitu was taunted
and pressurized by her in-laws for dowry. Later in 2005, when she got pregnant with
her rst child, she was asked by her in-laws to go for a sex-determination test to find
out the gender of the fetus.
Mitu did not agree to it and later found out that she was carrying twins. After this, her
husband and in-laws insisted that she must have the test done and one of them must
be a male child. Mitu continued to deny for this test and as a result, she was confned
in her room by her husband and in-laws.
Mitu Khurana 