Hundreds of dead babies have been found dumped in Pakistan in the last year, news reports said Wednesday.
Since the beginning of 2017, a total of 345 newbornds have been found dumped in Karachi. 99 per cent of the babies were girls.
In the most horrific cases, the reports said, a four-day-old girl was found with her throat slit.
Another newborn baby left on the steps of a mosque was stoned to death after a cleric assumed it was an "illegitimate baby".
Like India, Pakistan suffers from a massive problem of female infanticide.
Boys are preferred to girls because men are seen as wage earners and for a number of other societal reasons.
Infanticide is a crime in Pakistan but the news reports quote police as blaming poverty and illiteracy for the continuation of the practice.
The reports also quoted police as saying a crime can only be investigated if there has been a complaint but that in the last one year, there has only been one complaint about infanticide in Karachi, a city of 15 million people.