Gender reveal is a celebrated ceremony in the West where using creative ways to reveal the gender of the baby and celebrating it is the norm. But repeated incidents of cruelty and abortion based on the gender of the baby in our country show that we still have a long way to go. In Uttar Pradesh’s Budaun, a man ripped open his wife’s stomach to check whether the baby was a boy or not.
A resident of Baudan, Panna Lal was married to his wife Anita for 22 years and they already had 5 girls. This was a reason for his frustration as he wanted a boy, and as the days went by his frustration and anxiety took over his morality. With each passing day, the quarrels and fights between the couple extended and Pannalal even threatened to kill his wife.
On the day of this incident, a similar fight regarding the gender of the baby took place but all of a sudden the situation escalated, and Panna Lal attacked his wife with a sickle and cut her stomach open to see the gender of the baby. With her intestines hanging she ran away crying for help when her brother saw her and rushed her to the hospital.
She survived the injury but her infant did not. The irony is that this time the infant was a boy. Panna Lal destroyed the very thing he longed for. When he was accused of his wrongdoings, he blamed his wife and claimed that she inflicted these inhuman injuries upon herself to trap him under false implications regarding some property dispute.
The inhumanity and disregard for women that still exist in our country are shocking. People like Panna Lal who have no sympathy for women and consider them as machines to serve and produce babies need moral cleansing.
