BHUBANESWAR: A man in Odisha’s coastal district of Balasore has been taken into custody after his family accused him of trying to kill his newborn, police said on Monday.
Balasore superintendent of police (SP) Sagarika Nath said the infant is being treated at the Balasore district hospital and is still critical. “We have detained her father (Chandan Mahana) for questioning,” she said.
Police said Chandan Mahana was accused by his family of injecting a poisonous substance to his daughter when his wife Tanmayi was taking a bath minutes before a ceremony to name the newborn.
“The infant was supposed to be named today and we were very happy,” Tanmayi’s father Bhagirathi Singh.
“But when my daughter was away from the baby, my son-in-law injected the baby with a greenish liquid following which she started crying. When we rushed in and sensed something amiss, he threw the syringe away. However, we could recover the poison,” Bhagirathi Singh added.
Singh said his son-in-law was not happy that a daughter was born. “Though he did not admit it initially, he confessed to having administered poison with the help of a syringe as he did not want the girl child,” he alleged.
In another instance, Muna Munda, a tribal man in Keonjhar district’s Shankarpur village, tried to sell his four-month-old daughter to raise money to treat his ailing wife. Rajashri Upadhyay, a member of the Keonjhar district child welfare committee, said he was stopped by the committee. “When we got the information, we rushed to the village and managed to stop Munda. We have promised to help him raise funds for the treatment of his wife,” she said.
