A father who just got blessed with a bouncing baby girl has shocked people with his actions after allegedly burying the girl alive.
File photo: Indian police officers
An Indian man who is being accused of burying his newborn daughter alive because he wanted a boy, has been arrested by the police.
The Indian police made this revelation on Wednesday.
According to Agence France Presses (AFP), local villagers rescued the baby over the weekend after spotting her feet sticking up from a shallow sand pit in farmland in the Jajpur district of the eastern state of Odisha.
The little girl's father identified as Ramesh Chandra was promptly arrested for attempted manslaughter.
The 35-year-old part-time taxi driver is suspected of taking the baby from her mother soon after she was born on Saturday.
"They were unable to explain about the missing child after we scanned the locality for expecting mothers," investigating officer Jyoti Prakash Pande told AFP.
He said Chandra under questioning had admitted burying the baby, saying he was too poor to raise a daughter.
Many Indian parents consider daughters to be a burden because of the huge dowries still frequently required for marriage, while sons are expected to support them in their old age.
The couple already have two daughters and a son and had aborted two earlier pregnancies, the officer said.
It is unclear what will happen to the newborn, named Dharitri by staff at the hospital where she is under observation.
A mobile video shot at the time of her rescue shows a villager slowly removing sand with his bare hands and gently pulling out the infant wrapped in a blue piece of cloth.
The baby suddenly cries as a large, jubilant crowd tries to arrange an ambulance.
The incident highlights the scandal of female foeticide still plaguing the world's second most populous nation, which has a skewed sex ratio of 940 females for every 1,000 males, according to the last official census in 2011.