Kachu Mounika had identical twins when she was 22. She named them Geethanshi and Geethanvitha. They were almost five when their father, Srisailam, allegedly pushed them into a well on his farm on April 3, killing them both, on the outskirts of Jubilee Nagar in Telangana’s Karimnagar district.
At first, Srisailam claimed his daughters wandered away from him and fell by accident. But as Mounika later told the media, she had watched him abuse and curse them all their lives for being girls. Srisailam allegedly wanted a son.
Struggling to speak coherently between sobs, Mounika told reporters, “My girls looked exactly the same, adorable like laddoos. They were so sharp. They would sing and dance. But they were scared of their father. They used to hide when he came home. He used to hit them a lot and abuse them verbally.”
Two days earlier, on April 1, in the neighbouring Hanamkonda district, Md Azharuddin allegedly pushed his pregnant wife, Farhath, and their two daughters, Humera (9) and Ayesha (5), into a swimming pool he owned on the outskirts of their village, Punnelu. Farhath was in her eighth week of pregnancy. She was killed because she had resisted pressure from her in-laws to get an abortion, as they believed it would be another girl, according to her family.
Less than two days apart, four young girls and a defiant woman died because of Srisailam and Azharuddin’s hatred towards their own daughters.
These killings may seem like outliers, but they are not isolated acts of brutality. They are an appalling manifestation of a widespread, normalised preference for sons. Sex selection practices that end up erasing daughters before they are born are seen as a thing of the past, but activists say that they are still very common, enabled by the state’s failure to enforce existing laws and provide adequate protection and livelihood opportunities for women.
A skewed birth ratio, and what it reveals
India’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) – the number of girls born for every 1,000 boys – has improved marginally over the years. This figure was only 900 in 2013-15. It dipped slightly before rising to 917 in 2021-23, according to the latest Sample Registration Survey Statistical Report.
Throughout this period, while all five south Indian states have consistently maintained sex ratios at birth above the national average, Telangana has stayed under this line since 2017-19.
In 2021-23, Telangana’s sex ratio at birth was 908 — 906 in rural areas and 910 in urban areas — the lowest in south India and the seventh lowest nationwide, pointing to the scale of female foeticide in the state.
Without sex selection, the sex ratio at birth is expected to be around 952 girls for every 1,000 boys (or 105 boys per 100 girls). The world’s sex ratio at birth has stayed close to this number for decades.
Activists say that the killings of Geethanshi, Geethanvitha, Humera, Ayesha, and Farhath are unusual and an extreme manifestation of the widespread cultural aversion to daughters, or the preference for sons. Their deaths are also a reminder of the extent to which illegal sex determination remains accessible and culturally normalised, despite a ban under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act.
Diagnostic centres get away with illegal sex determination
In the Hanamkonda case, after Farhath gave birth to the two girls, Humera and Ayesha, she conceived two more times. When she died, she was pregnant for the fifth time. On the two previous occasions, she allegedly underwent illegal sex determination tests and was forced to undergo abortions both times as the foetus was female, Inavole Sub-Inspector of Police P Srinivas told TNM.
Her husband Azharuddin was booked along with his parents and brother for murder, domestic abuse, forced abortion, and also under the PCPNDT Act.
Farhath’s family told the media that this time, she was adamant that she wouldn’t get an abortion, although her husband and in-laws insisted. They said she even returned to her maternal home with her daughters, but Azharuddin came and took them back.
“It was too early for sex determination as she was only about eight weeks pregnant. But the husband was convinced it would be another girl, and insisted on an abortion,” the SI said. He added that the doctors who performed the foetal sex determination on the previous occasions have been identified, and that they will soon be booked and arrested after gathering further evidence.
Dr A Appaiah, District Medical & Health Officer (DMHO) for Hanamakonda, told TNM that his department visited the clinics allegedly involved, suo motu, but found them closed.
According to activist Kondaveeti Satyavati, founder of Bhumika Women's Collective, implementation of the PCPNDT Act has been poor across the state, with inadequate monitoring of diagnostic centres and clinics.
A member of the PCPNDT District Advisory Committee (DAC) for Hyderabad, Satyavati, said that the committees are formed on paper but remain largely inactive and ineffective.
These committees are headed by the DMHO. Dr Appaiah said that there are around 198 diagnostic centres or clinics registered in Hanamakonda under the PCPNDT Act, and quarterly audits are performed on most of them. “We are also monitoring regions with poor sex ratios through our field staff,” he added.
But Satyavati said that sex determination continues unchecked, particularly in clinics on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
Activist Rukmini Rao, founder of the Gramya Resource Centre for Women, said that people find out which clinics to visit through word of mouth, or from RMPs (Rural Medical Practitioners who usually lack any formal medical qualifications). “RMPs are a big conduit for this, as they are local residents who develop networks with diagnostic centres,” she said, adding that sometimes, advanced technologies or mobile diagnostic vans are also used to evade authorities.
“People use code words such as colours, plus, minus, etc. to communicate the sex, and no records are maintained,” Satyavati said.
Dr Appaiah acknowledged that information about doctors or technicians performing prenatal sex screening is passed down through whisper networks, but cracking down on them remains challenging. “We are unable to track down specific centres. We are only able to act based on suspicion. We visit and inspect suspected clinics, but haven’t been able to collect any evidence. We didn’t find any records or information from patients present,” he said.
As a result, very few cases are detected or punished. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), zero PCPNDT cases were recorded in Telangana from 2021 to 2023.
Satyavati suggested that the PCPNDT Act must have a dedicated helpline and staff who can act quickly on tip-offs and tighten surveillance on sex screening centres.
But according to Dr Appaiah, despite putting out a WhatsApp number and complaints boxes in a few public places, they never receive complaints. He said that even when diagnostic centres are inspected, visitors voluntarily looking for sex screening are unwilling to share information with authorities.
Besides, sex selection often happens much earlier at the stage of embryo plantation, in the increasing number of pregnancies through IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
Activist Mamatha Raghuveer Achanta, who has worked on tackling female infanticide and foeticide in Warangal and other parts of Telangana, said that when she visited scores of IVF clinics as part of a state government committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), she found that most children born through IVF were boys. She said that doctors performing IVF, too, must be required to perform counselling in such cases.
How does this stop?
On April 6, three days after he killed his twin daughters, Srisailam was arrested along with his parents and brother, who are accused of conspiring with him. Karimnagar Commissioner of Police Gaush Alam told the media that after the father allegedly pushed them into the well, one of the girls drowned instantly. The other child tried to save herself, struggling to stay afloat.
“When Srisailam saw that, he went down into the well and forcefully drowned her,” the SP said. He then held on to the girl’s body and started shouting, claiming he had been trying to save her.
“There was hatred against his own daughters, mainly because he saw them as a burden. He felt he would have to spend on their weddings. He always desired a male child,” Gaush Alam added.
Srisailam had allegedly been harassing Mounika ever since she gave birth to her daughters, asking her to return to her maternal home. “He used to hit me and ask me for money. He would say, ‘You’re a woman, you gave birth to daughters, you’re cursed, you’ll keep having daughters.’ I still kept hoping he would change,” Mounika told a local media outlet.
At a recent mediation with community elders, someone mentioned that the girls would be entitled to a share of his property, according to Mounika. “That stayed in his mind. He killed them to avoid giving them his property. He even told me he would remarry soon, but I didn’t expect him to kill them,” she said.
Rukmini said that while such murders of older children are rare, other forms of violence, such as men abandoning their wives for having daughters, or disinheriting them, are quite common.
Rukmini has worked in Nalgonda’s Devarakonda for nearly three decades, in Lambada tribal villages where newborn girls were often given up for illegal adoption, driven by both poverty and a preference for sons. Noting that sex selection is rampant across communities and classes, Rukmini said that in Devarakonda, things have changed over the years, with girls accessing education and other interventions.
“All the girls there are now going to school. The government’s welfare residential institutions are better equipped now to admit more girls. Schemes like Kalyana Lakshmi (a government scheme providing financial assistance to women for their wedding) also helped. The Ooyala scheme (the government’s cradle scheme that accepts unwanted newborns) was also promoted as a safe alternative to illegal adoptions or trafficking,” said Rukmini.
In cases where there’s resentment after a girl is born, Rukmini said that often, counselling the mother and family for a few months helped. “The women get very depressed from the in-laws’ taunts and the husband threatening to abandon them. Counselling the mother and providing adequate nutrition can help them tide over the first few months. By then, in most cases, the fathers grow attached to their daughters,” she said.
Mamatha noted that in both the Hanamakonda and Karimnagar incidents, the mothers insisted on keeping the girls and raising them, yet they couldn’t protect them.
While one-stop centres set up under the Nirbhaya fund could respond to distress calls from women facing such violence, Rukmini says they are often underfunded with delayed salaries.
Satyavati, whose organisation Bhumika has run the one-stop centre in Karimnagar for seven years, said that the centres can only offer temporary shelter and relief. Without livelihood or family support, women and their daughters remain stuck with their husbands and in-laws.
Rukmini said that the government and all political parties must prioritise addressing sex selection practices by mobilising party workers and government employees to report cases of abandonment, female foeticide, sex determination, and so on.
“These attitudes endure because of entrenched patriarchy, which needs long-term, comprehensive solutions. If girls get equal access to education, employment and power, parents may stop rejecting them,” she said.
