Police in Karachi hunt for those who perform illegal abortions

Karachi: Police officials in Karachi Tuesday launched a manhunt to find those responsible for illegal abortions in the city.

Up to five foetuses, aged about three months, were found in garbage disposal sites, the officials said.

Plastic jar

The foetuses had been placed in a plastic jar and thrown into a garbage pit by some unknown people at Manzoor Colony, a poor and lower middle-class neighbourhood in the city, said the officials.

According to local residents, a child noticed the jar lying in the garbage and alerted the people in the vicinity, who then reported the matter to the police.

Police officials brought the jar to the police station for further investigations.

"It looks like a case of illegal abortion carried out in one of the hospitals in that area," senior superintendent of police Tarek Dharejo told Gulf News.

Monitoring activity

"We are trying to probe the matter by monitoring different maternity homes and hospitals located there," Dharejo said.

Pakistan's law prohibits abortion. It is considered an immoral act and against Islam. However, rights groups in the country are trying to make abortion legal in order to save the lives of many illegitimate children.

Edhi Foundation, the reputed welfare organisation in Pakistan, has installed hundreds of cradles outsides its offices with a message, ‘Don't Kill, Lay Them Here'.

Anwar Kazmi, official at the foundation, said nearly 600 newborn babies are found in the country annually of which half are found alive while the rest of them are found dead. But over a period of time the number of dead babies has drastically increased to 800 a year and only 100 babies are found alive.

'We find very few babies alive now'

"It is unfortunate that now we find very few babies alive as compared to a few years ago," Kazmi said.

The foundation has been taking care of abandoned or disowned children for 60 years and has handed some 22,000 such children to childless couples.

Right activists say the issue is complex.

"Abortion is the right of women, it's their choice to go for it or not, but in our society, the male decides whether to have a child or not," said Muqtida Mansour, a rights activist and writer.

He said that only when society and traditional customs go through a transformation can such issues be taken up by the state or legislators.