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Baby killed for gender

(CNN) — Nineteen-year-old Reshma Banu sits on the stairs outside her parents’ home, staring at the tiny screen on her cell phone. The video on the screen has her mesmerized: a very short home video of her baby girl, Afreen. The moments captured are precious because they show Banu’s only child alive and well. Afreen died in the hospital. She was three months old. Authorities say the baby was admitted to the hospital with bite marks, cigarette burns and a dislocated neck. Police say she was killed by her father. “After my delivery my husband had come to see me and the baby. He said, ‘It is a girl, why did you give birth to a girl?’” He wanted a boy, an heir. Girls were too expensive, he said. A couple of days after giving birth, Banu says her husband gave an ultimatum. “For her wedding we will require a hundred thousand rupees (about US$1,800 dollars) for all the expense. If you can get that amount from your mother, then keep her, but if you can’t, then kill her,” Banu recalled her husband as saying. She didn’t believe he meant it and was sure he would change his mind once he held his soft, bright-eyed baby girl. Three months later, her baby is dead, and her husband is under arrest, accused of beating the baby to death. Police say he confessed to the killing. This is by no means the first case of its kind in India. Attitudes, traditions, and economics have come together to make being a girl a dangerous prospect in the country, doctors say. Most of the time girls are disposed of long before they are born.