In yet another appalling incident of prejudice against the girl child born with physical abnormalities, a Pakistani father allegedly killed his newborn daughter by burying her alive because she was born with a deformed face, Daily Mail reported.
The accused Chand Khan has been arrested for killing his two-day-old daughter in Khanewal city last week. The child was born at al-Shifa hospital in the nearby town Kacha Khoh of Pakistan on Thursday.
According to the doctor who delivered the baby, the child was born healthy but with a large head and some "abnormal features", which perhaps irked her father.
On seeing the newborn, the father decided that he doesn't want the child and wanted to dispose her body without anyone's knowledge.
The doctor told Daily Mail that Khan had approached him after the birth of the girl and asked him to dispose the child.
"This man came to me yesterday with a request that I should do something to dispose of his child, but I snubbed him and said get out," Dr Mohammed Farooq of al-Shifa hospital told the daily. "No one has the right to kill anyone because of his or her physical deformity."
After being rebuked for seeking out ways to kill the newborn, Khan secretly arranged a funeral for the baby, telling his relatives that she was born dead. During the funeral procession, the child's cries alarmed the cleric who immediately informed the authorities.
According to reports, Khan's wife was still in the hospital when her husband buried their newborn daughter alive. The couple has five other children, two girls and three boys
Police said they will dig up the graveyard to perform an autopsy on the child's body, and if the father is found guilty, he could be charged for murder and be given a death sentence.
Such incidents are not uncommon in countries like Pakistan and India. Recently, a two-month-old girl child was burnt alive by her superstitious father in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Luckily, the girl was saved.
In a similar incident last year, a two-day-old baby girl was rescued after being buried alive in a village in Madhya Pradesh. The child remained buried for 48 long hours before she was rescued by a local farmer who heard her cries.
