INDIA:Police in eastern India's Orissa state are investigating the origins of 30 bags full of babies' body parts recovered from a waste dump near a maternity clinic.
Investigators suspect a nearby medical clinic in Nayagarh, 90km west of state capital Bhubaneswar, performed the abortions and possibly killed infants at the parents' request because they were female.
Police officer Yogesh Bahadur Khurania said forensic tests were being conducted to confirm whether the clinic was determining the sex of foetuses - a practice banned in India, but one that remains widespread.
Similar incidents have frequently been reported from other parts of the country in recent months, raising concerns about India's dwindling female population.
According to the 2001 census, there were 933 females for every 1,000 males, while the child sex ratio in the ages between 0 and 6 was 927 girls for every 1,000 boys.
Non-governmental organisations estimate that up to 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted across the country over the past two decades.
India's minister for women and child development, Renuka Chowdhary, has said the government plans to monitor all pregnancies to prevent female foeticide.
Though gender-determination tests are illegal across India, the law is regularly flouted and clinics offering them abound. With portable ultrasound machines, these tests can now be conducted even in remote areas.
"It's an unholy alliance between tradition and technology. Ultrasound was not meant for sex selection," demographer Ashish Bose said. "It's just a quick way for greedy doctors to make money."
The Voluntary Health Association said affluence, improved healthcare and a larger number of trained health workers and midwives in rural areas had contributed to the increase of female foeticide, especially in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana in the north that otherwise top the list of the country's developmental indices.
In Punjab, for every 1,000 males there were 874 females, while in Haryana this ratio slipped to a worrying 861:1,000, forcing men to "import" wives from others states.
India has a long history of female infanticide - of baby girls poisoned, suffocated, drowned, starved or simply abandoned and left to die.
Girls are considered a liability, as expensive dowries have to be paid at their weddings, which invariably cost a fortune. Even the poorest of peasants is under tremendous peer pressure to organise lavish weddings, often by taking usurious loans.
But boys are an asset. Even the most ineligible comes at a premium, commanding a dowry that in innumerable instances extends over years to a steady demand on the girl's family for money and other goods.
Refusal to comply often leads to cases of "bride burning", a euphemism for murder on grounds of avarice that, despite a slew of harsh laws, remains rampant.
One population expert said that having fewer women does not mean that their importance or value increases in Punjab and Haryana.
On the contrary, brides are frequently subjected to increased domestic violence and abuse, forcibly cloistered inside their homes to cook, keep house and - above all else - produce male offspring.