Indian authorities have discovered 19 aborted fetuses dumped in plastic bags in the western state of Maharashtra, as officials continue a major investigation into illegal sex-selective abortion in the country.
The fetuses were discovered in a sewer near a local medical clinic suspected of carrying out illegal abortions and have been sent for DNA testing to determine their sex. Police are also investigating the death of a local woman after a botched abortion performed at the clinic by a homeopathist.
Indian laws ban doctors and health workers from sharing an unborn child's sex with the parents, or carrying out tests to determine the child's gender. Yet police suspect there is a major interstate femal feticide racket currently operating in the West of the country.
Dr Ganesh Rakh, an outspoken campaigner against sex-selective abortion in India, said the recent case indicates that illegal sex determination and abortion is still practised in India.
"This is horrifying. Female foeticide is happening at the scale of a genocide in India. This case proves that people still prefer boys and girls are still unwanted," he said.
Eight female foetuses were found in 2012 in a plastic bag near a lake in Indore city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.