Bihar journalist’s BBC documentary exposes systemic rot of female infanticide over 30 years

By the time journalist Amitabh Parashar is introduced in the BBC documentary, The Midwife’s Confession, the audience is invested in his journey. 

In the run-up, he is shown accompanying a group of young men in Bihar’s Katihar to a spot where an abandoned female infant was found. On the way, the men narrate how they removed ants from the baby’s eyes and took her to the hospital. “We found  a little goddess,” they said. 

With damp eyes and choked words, Parashar thanks them. But this is only one of the many such incidents he has documented over nearly three decades. 

His journey began as a newbie reporter in 1995, when he stumbled upon a story about female foeticide. He then found a pattern of midwives murdering new-born baby girls on directives from their families. Parashar gained the trust of these women and filmed their confessions. 

This serves as the focal point of The Midwife’s Confession, a documentary that explores the history of female infanticide and the impact of social campaigns that empowered midwives to save vulnerable infants. The two-part documentary by BBC Eye, the investigative unit of BBC World Service, is being aired on BBC News and is also available on their YouTube channel. The text story can be read here.

Parashar also wears the hat of the documentaryʼs director, along with Syed Ahmed Safi. The executive producers are Anubha Bhonsle and Daniel Adamson, with Ankur Jain as the India series producer, Neha Tara Mehta as producer, and Abhinav Tyagi as the film editor. 

Speaking to Newslaundry at a private screening in Delhi on Wednesday, Parashar said: “As journalists, we are taught to not get involved in the story. But I think there is a problem in that practice – in how we abandon the story after it is done.” 

He added, “I didn’t want to be on camera, but they said I am a character in the film too, so I became one. The lines between me being a journalist, a character in the film, and a director became blurry.” His discomfort with being the main character was evident as he exited the room as soon as the screening began. 

In the confessions revealed in the documentary, the women unflinchingly narrate how they killed the babies, at times by feeding them salt or strangling them using the umbilical cord. Hakiya Devi, one of the midwives, said on camera that she had killed 12-13 babies. Dharmi Devi, another midwife, confessed to killing at least 15-20. 

They said that they did not have a choice and were forced by the women’s families to do it in exchange for as much as Rs 100. In the 1990s, the midwives – who belonged to marginalised castes and were in this profession for generations – were usually officially paid Rs 10-20 per delivery. The women said that all the families paying to kill the girl child were from Savarna castes.   

The film also cites a 1996 report, which estimated that just 35 midwives murdered at least 1,000 babies per year in each district of Bihar. Most of the midwives saved up the payments they received to kill infants to pay for their daughter’s dowry. 

Parashar said, “The midwives had to earn money for their daughter’s dowry and killed babies for that. The reason for the newborn’s families getting their daughters killed also boiled down to the same – worry for dowry. The contradiction that I saw the cycle the midwives were stuck in struck a note with me.”

Through a series of interventions, social activist Anita Kumari persuaded the midwives to bring the infants to her instead of killing them. Almost three decades later, Parashar tracked down one such young woman, Monica Thatte, who, in all probability, was rescued by the midwives in the late 1990s. Thatte was adopted by a family in Pune at the age of three. The film also follows her journey back to Bihar to meet midwives Anita Kumari and Siro. Thatte’s reunion with the women is a powerful scene that left the audience teary-eyed. 

Parashar’s ability to see the midwives not as criminals but as victims of the system is also captured in the film with sensitivity. 

If you’re reading this story, you’re not seeing a single advertisement. That’s because Newslaundry powers ad-free journalism that’s truly in public interest. Support our work and subscribe today.