Agra city campaigns against female foeticide

Agra, Feb 22 (ANI): Hundreds of students participated in an awareness campaign against female foeticide here on Sunday.

Actors Jaya Bachchan and Rohini Hattangadi participated in the 'Save the Girl Child' rally, organized by Yuvak Biradri Mumbai.

"I hope to see some of you from this crowd as some of the biggest and some of the very good leaders of this nation who are going to take the nation forward and progress and bring it to almost at the same on par with any other power in the world, not in terms of military power but in terms of knowledge power, in terms of health power, in terms of education power, in terms of making the country look beautiful Green Power and this is only possible if you allow women to live, survive, educate because you know that leaders that have really left a mark not only in this country but all over the world have been women," said Jaya Bachchan.

Despite the existence of laws that ban tests to determine the sex of an unborn child, the destruction of female foetuses is common in some parts of India where the preference for sons runs deep.

The United Nations says that an estimated 2,000 unborn girls are illegally aborted every day in India.

This has led to skewed sex ratios in states like Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and New Delhi. The 2001 census shows there are less than 800 girls for every 1,000 boys.

As per a government statistics around 10 million girls have been killed by their parents-either before or immediately after their births-over the past 20 years. (ANI)