Mumbai: Gopinath Janku Pradhan, a resident of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra, drowned his daughter in a bathtub and killed her because his son had been born a second baby girl.
However, the family covered up the murder and staged a drama, claiming that an animal had entered through the open door in the middle of the night and carried the child away, causing her death. They then hurriedly performed the final rites.
However, the police, who registered a case based on a complaint from an ASHA worker regarding the child’s death, exhumed the child’s body and conducted a postmortem, which revealed that the child had been murdered by drowning.
Following this, the accused in the case, Gopinath Janku Pradhan, was arrested and lodged in prison. In this situation, after his bail plea was rejected by the lower court, he appealed to the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court seeking bail.
When the petition came up for hearing before Judge M.M. Nerlikar, the judge expressed deep concern over gender discrimination. “Even after 75 years since our country gained independence, it is very unfortunate that people in our country still prefer male children. In particular, when the first child is a girl, the second girl child has been killed because they did not want another daughter to be born. This is an example of people still preferring male children,” the judge said with anguish.
Following this, the judge dismissed the bail petition, noting that Gopinath had direct involvement with Janku Pradhan in this murder.
