Forced to abort female foetus, mom ends life in Tamil Nadu
TIRUVANNAMALAI: Unable to withstand the harassment of husband and in-laws over her female foetus, a five-month pregnant woman allegedly killed her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and ended her life at Karikalampadi village near Kilpennathur in Tiruvannamalai district on Tuesday.
Two days after Umadevi (25) and daughter Meghanasree were found dead in a well near their house, police on Thursday arrested Umadevi’s husband Vignesh (27), an auto driver, his parents Jayavel (58) and Sivagami (43), and a relative of the deceased woman, Sarathy (39), on the charge of abetment to suicide and other sections.
After Umadevi’s family raised the suspicion of murder, police are looking into that allegation too, sources said.
According to police, Umadevi and her husband had travelled to Tirupati on Monday, allegedly accompanied by Sarathy, to illegally determine the sex of the foetus.
Husband, in-laws held for abetment to suicide
Upon learning that it was a female foetus, the family pressured Umadevi to undergo an abortion, police said. When she refused, an argument broke out, and she was allegedly assaulted. Hours later, Umadevi and her daughter were found dead under suspicious circumstances, police said.
According to the Tiruvannamalai police, after the locals spotted the bodies on Tuesday, they alerted the fire and rescue services personnel who recovered the bodies from the well and sent them to the Tiruvannamalai Government Medical College Hospital for autopsy.
Following the deaths, Umadevi’s father, Elumalai (51), an auto driver based in Bengaluru, filed a complaint on Tuesday night with the Kilpennathur police station. An FIR was filed and the four accused were apprehended the next day. The bodies were cremated on Thursday.
Family sources told TNIE that Umadevi had also been facing dowry harassment. “Vignesh was unhappy even with their first girl child. He had threatened that if the second child was also a girl, he would force her to abort,” said a relative.
Based on the investigation, police have charged the accused under Sections 296 (b) (death caused by negligence), 85 (outraging a woman’s modesty) and 108 (abetment of suicide) of the BNS, and Section 4 (b) of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act, 1998, pertaining to harassment causing mental or physical harm to a woman.
All the four accused have been remanded in judicial custody.
Health authorities in Tamil Nadu use the PICME (Pregnancy and Infant Cohort Monitoring & Evaluation) system to digitally track pregnant women from early pregnancy to postnatal care, with every woman assigned a unique RCH ID for monitoring. Health officials from Tiruvannamalai said, “Many women seek treatment at private clinics to bypass such government systems. Upon checking, we found Umadevi was not registered under the PICME system.”
Officials also highlighted the troubling gender ratio prevalent in Tiruvannamalai district — only 915 females for every 1,000 males during FY 2024-25. Many families opt for illegal sex determination in one district and conduct abortions elsewhere. It reflects a deep-rooted social preference for male children, officials said. To counter this trend, the health department is ramping up decoy operations to crack down on unregistered scan centres and illegal prenatal gender tests, they added.
(If you have suicidal thoughts, call 104 for Tamil Nadu health department’s helpline 104)