Disappearing Daughters: India's Female Feticide

Every 12 seconds, a baby girl is aborted in India. That's about 7,000 girls killed every day just because they are females.      
The United Nations now calls India the most dangerous place on earth for a girl.

So why are these parents taking such action? CBN News went searching for answers in a remote village of Rajasthan in northeast India.

Beware the 'Medicine Man'

In rural villages and big cities, millions of families are turning to men like Kilash Boria to help eliminate their girl children.

For more than two decades, Boria's father was known around Rajasthan as the medicine man. He created a secret brew that he'd give to pregnant women to help abort their babies.

"From the time I was a child I saw my father giving this drink to women in the village," Boria told CBN News.

"Do you have any idea how many women your father saw during his lifetime?" CBN News' George Thomas asked.

"At least 500 women," Boria replied.

Abortion is legal in India. Sex-selective abortion, however, is illegal but widely common. The impact is devastating, with census figures showing the child sex ratios getting worse. 

In 2001, there were 927 girls for every 1,000 boys. Now the girls in that ratio are down to 914. In some parts of the Indian state of Punjab, the ratio is as low as 300 girls.

"Indians are obsessed with having a boy," Boria explained. "They just don't want to have girls."

Boria's Deadly Brew

Like his father, Boria is also a farmer but with no training as a professional doctor. Nevertheless, Boria took over his father's gruesome line of work when he passed away three years ago.

He now sees on average between four to five women each month. He showed CBN News how he concocts the traditional abortifacient.

"I crush the bark of the mango tree and marva tree together into paste-like substance," he explained. "It has to sit for about two hours. I then mix it with other ingredients and black magic."

The instructions to the pregnant woman are very specific: He tells her that this entire glass has to be consumed. But before that happens, Boria explains that about 100 milligrams of a locally brewed wine should be mixed with the pasty concoction.

Then on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning, half of it needs to be drunk. The remainder is to be taken right before going to bed with a full stomach.

"Within two or three days the women has an abortion," Boria said.

And what is the evidence that Boria's concoction is actually working? After each abortion the patient would place two coconuts on his front porch as a way of thanking him for his efforts.

Kaveena, 26, was one of those women. Several years ago she underwent an abortion with Boria's help.

"I already had a son, but then I became pregnant again and discovered that I was having a girl," she told CBN News. "The family and village pressure was so much I had to do it."

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