Bidar: There could not be a story more tragic than this to highlight the plight of the girl child in a country where the yearning for male children has led to the rampant female feticide, a gender bias in all fields and harassment.
The desire for a male child made a Lambani couple at Sindhol Thanda in Bidar taluk give birth to 15 girl children, one each year for the last fifteen years. Of these 15, six children died after birth. But the abject poverty and the failure to deliver a male child made Sethaanibai desert her 15th child she delivered on June 11 at a local government hospital.
Her husband Govardhan Rathod works as a daily wage labourer in Mumbai, the couple has no land of their own in the Thanda. Sethaanibai ekes out a living as a coolie. She has already married off her three elder daughters, the remaining children supplement her income working as coolies.
“I have given birth to so many children in the hope of getting a male child. I’m so ashamed to give birth again to a female, I did not even look at its face and left it in the hospital”, she says.
She regrets that due to poverty she has not been able to look after her children and give them education. “With great difficulty I got my three daughters married off. I left my last child in the hospital as I do not have the resources to raise her. So far I have not got any benefit from the government, I appeal to them to come to my rescue”, Sethaanibai pleads.
On coming to know about her plight, the department of women and child welfare besides promising to lend Rs 1 lakh, they also have decided to get her seven-year-old daughter into a hostel.
