Kalaburagi: A poverty-stricken Lambani woman nearly abandoned her newborn daughter in Konchavaram, Chincholi taluk, but changed her mind on being promised help by the government to raise her children.
Bordering Telangana, and dotted with several Lambani tandas or hamlets, the area is notorious for infanticide. The woman, Yashoda from the Chapla Naik Tanda near Konchavaram, reportedly began to cry at the Konchavaram Government Hospital on Monday on learning that she had given birth to a girl, when she already had three daughters and two sons. “I’m finding it extremely difficult to raise them. When I am finding it hard to make ends meet, how can I raise her?” she is said to have wailed to the hospital staff.
The woman lost her husband, Shivaji Rathod, a coolie in Mumbai, about six months ago when he fell off a moving train near Sedam town while returning home and died. A few leaders of the community, who visited her in hospital, tried hard to convince her not to give up her baby, but Yashoda felt the child would be better off at the District Newborn Baby Care Centre run by the Department of Women and Child Welfare. She, however, relented on Wednesday and decided to keep her baby after Chicholi MLA, Dr Umesh Jadhava, visited the hospital and promised her all help possible.
Dr Jadhav directed the tahasildar and other officers concerned to take measures to get her a house and other benefits from the government.
While Yashoda’s story could have a happy ending, a recent study by a team of professors from the Gulbarga University has revealed that many Lambani women, who have no means to live on, are killing their newborns if they happen to be girls, with the help of midwives in hospitals.
And a few years ago it was widely reported that many female babies from the area were sold through different agencies located in neighbouring Tandur and other places to buyers from both within the country and abroad.
