CHENNAI: In an incident straight out of nightmares, a 27-year-old man has been arrested for trying to abort his teenaged girlfriend’s unplanned pregnancy by manually pulling the eight-month-old foetus out of the womb. He attempted the ‘procedure’ after watching YouTube videos. The girl, who was battling for life till Thursday morning, is now said to be out of danger.
The gruesome tale does not end there. According to the police, the baby died in the womb itself. The accused tried to pull the infant out by its hand, dismembering it in the process. After the botched attempt, he took the 19-year-old girl to Government Ponneri Hospital, which is 25 km away from the spot of crime, by his bike. From Ponneri, the girl was referred to a GH in Chennai. There, the doctors removed the rest of the foetus, and saved the girl.
UNPLANNED PREGNANCY
Police say the accused made the ‘freak attempt’ as both himself and the girl, a college student, did not want their families to find out about the pregnancy. After convincing her that he could remove the foetus, he took her on Wednesday night to a cashew farm near Gummidipoondi. “He purchased the equipment on that morning: gloves, surgical blades, scissors, and surgical gel,” say officials. “He got the items based on some YouTube tutorial on home births. He tried to push the foetus out forcibly. He was confused when the hand came out first instead of head. There was no video on pulling a baby out by hand, but he just went ahead with it.”
Doctors who treated the girl say the accused used a surgical knife on her. He cut two centimetres in a futile attempt to pull out rest of the baby. Only when the girl started bleeding heavily did he place her on the bike and take her to the hospital. The shocked doctors confronted accused before sending the girl to the Royapuram GH. Police say the girl had concealed her pregnancy fearing repercussions from parents. “The girl’s mother, a widow, was not aware her daughter was pregnant. When people asked her, she just told them that she had gained weight,” said another officer. The accused told the police that he did not take the girl to a hospital as he feared arrest.
The accused, a gas delivery agent, has been dating the girl for the last four years — since she was in Class-X. Experts say things like this happen largely because people are unaware of procedures at government hospitals. “We will treat unmarried girls who are pregnant. We will perform abortion if the pregnancy is well within 20 weeks,” says Dr S Vijaya, Director of Government Hospital for Women and Children. “There has to be awareness among public on safer options.” The accused is now in judicial custody.