Yet, things would take a further turn for the tragic when the couple took her to be buried. As the grave was being dug, they heard a worrying noise, leading them to a sickening realization.
“At one point I thought that my daughter had come alive,” Hitesh Kumar told the Times of India. “But the voice was actually coming from inside the pot.”
It transpired that a tiny baby had been buried alive and left for dead inside a clay pot nearby.
“When the pot was opened, a baby girl was kept inside,” Hitesh continued. “I immediately called ambulance and informed police to ensure that her life was saved.”
The baby was rushed to the Maharana Pratap District Hospital and placed in the Special Newborn Care unit.
The poor girl, not even weighing three pounds, had been left to die three-feet down. One police officer reportedly said she looked to be only several days old.
“They immediately called the cemetery guard, who said that he saw the parents there earlier,” the anonymous officer said, as per the New York Post. “It seems to be a case of female infanticide.”
Sadly, the process of abandoning or killing female babies after birth is not uncommon in India. Girls are seen as a financial drain and require families to build up dowries, so many would-be parents hope for boys.
A search is now underway to find the people responsible for leaving this girl to die.
“We are trying to find the parents of the baby and we suspect that this must have happened with their consent,” Abhinandan Singh, the police chief, said.
“We are trying to identify the person who had buried the baby girl alive,” Harishchandra Joshi, with the Subhashnagar police, added.
“We are checking the CCTV footage of the cremation ground An FIR would be registered soon.”
We hope the people responsible are found and brought to justice. Every baby deserves a chance at life, and for someone to rob them of that chance is simply unforgivable.
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