Beneath the surface of Madhya Pradesh's vast landscapes, from rural fields to urban fringes, a quiet tragedy unfolds year after year, claiming the lives of the unborn and newly born. The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report for 2024 has once again thrust the state into a grim spotlight, ranking it number one in the nation for both infant abandonment and feticide cases. This is not a fleeting anomaly but a deeply entrenched social malaise that has shadowed the state for at least six years, exposing failures in support systems, entrenched gender biases, and the silent desperation of vulnerable families.
Infant Abandonment Cases
In 2024 alone, Madhya Pradesh recorded 146 cases of infant abandonment, the highest in India and accounting for more than 21 percent of the national total of 686. These newborns, often hours or days old, were discovered in heartbreaking places such as bushes, rubbish dumps, roadsides, isolated fields, or left outside hospitals. Gujarat followed with 117 cases, and Maharashtra with 110. Child rights activists emphasize that these figures likely capture only a fraction of the reality, particularly in remote rural areas where incidents may go unreported due to stigma, fear, or lack of access to authorities.
The trend's persistence is chilling. Madhya Pradesh has topped the charts consistently: 187 cases in 2019, 186 in 2020, 159 in 2021, 174 in 2022, 140 in 2023, and 146 in 2024. Even as numbers fluctuated, the state never relinquished its unwanted lead.
Feticide Statistics
Compounding the horror, Madhya Pradesh also led in foeticide with 27 cases in 2024, over 20 percent of India's total of 133. Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra each reported 19 cases, while Rajasthan had 14.
Root Causes
Social experts point to a toxic brew of factors: deep-seated son preference, poverty that makes another mouth impossible to feed, social stigma around unwed or unwanted pregnancies, absent counseling for at-risk women, and frail safety nets. In villages where dowry demands and inheritance biases linger, girls, whether born or unborn, bear the brunt.
Call for Action
Activists call for urgent interventions, including better awareness, accessible adoption channels, stricter enforcement of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, and community-driven support. Yet as the NCRB data stacks up, Madhya Pradesh's children remain imperiled from the womb onward, a stark reminder that statistics are more than numbers—they are lives lost in silence.
