india

Updated: Sep 05, 2016 13:35 IST

A woman in Uttar Pradesh’ Kanpur stole her 17-day-old nephew from a hospital and threw him from the rooftop because she thought his birth would lower her status in the family as she has three daughters, police said on Monday.

Anmol was being treated at Shyam Maternity and Children’s Hospital in Indira Nagar, Kalyanpur, for some complications after his birth in August. His father, Sarvesh Kumar of Indergarh Kannauj, and mother Alka had gone home on Sunday night leaving him in Sarita Devi’s care, police said.

Around 4.30am Sarita raised an alarm about the child missing from the hospital. Police were called in after hospital employees failed to find Anmol.

A police constable, while looking for the infant in the adjoining lane, heard a muffled cry and followed the sound. Anmol was found entangled in the iron net some 16 foot below the hospital roof. The net was cast to prevent the monkeys from entering the hospital.

“Anmol was hanging by the net. Part of the clothes he was wearing was hooked to a protruding iron piece. Thank God, he didn’t fall,” Pankaj Kashyap, the ward boy who followed the constable and the complainant in the case, said.

The hospital has filed a complaint with the police. Later while scanning the CCTV footage, police found Sarita taking the baby towards the rooftop at 4am. She was seen coming back without Anmol.

“She is under arrest and the case is being registered against her,” Rajdev Prajapati, Kalyanpur police station officer, said.

Sarita told the police she feared Anmol’s birth would complicate issues for her in the family and that Anmol’s mother would have more respect than her.

“I have three daughters and not a day goes by that I am not bitterly teased that I cannot give birth to a boy,” she said.

Last month, a woman in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district alleged that her in-laws tried to set her alight when she was sleeping after an astrologer predicted she will give birth to a girl child.

Hundreds of girls are lost to sex-selective abortion and female infanticide in India everyday where daughters are often viewed as burden because of the continuing prevalence of the dowry system. Many of them are abandoned after birth.

A 2011 study in The Lancet medical journal found up to 12 million Indian girls had been aborted in the past three decades. And, India has reported a declining child sex ratio (the number of females to 1,000 males under six years of age), which fell from 945 in 1991 to 918 in 2011.