Hundreds of dead baby girls found dumped in Pakistan
Karachi, Pakistan
Since the beginning of 2017, 345 dead babies have been found dumped in Karachi. 99 per cent of the newborns were girls
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.