A father of five girls cut opened his pregnant wife’s stomach to check the gender of his unborn baby.
The suspect Panna Lal, a resident of Badaun in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, and his wife were married for more than two decades and had five daughters, an Indian media outlet reported.
However, Lal would regularly get into fight with his wife as he wanted her to give birth to a boy. The family of the wife, identified as Anita, knew about the dispute and had asked Panna Lal put an end to the continuous fights.
Instead of resolving his issues with his wife, Lal threatened to divorce Anita and marry another woman.
The incident happened when the couple got into a fight over the gender of the unborn baby, their sixth.
As the fight turned violent, the father of five took hold of a sickle and attacked his wife to cut open her stomach to check if she was going to give birth to a boy or a girl.
Anita fought her way out of the house to the streets and reached her brother who was working at a nearby shop while Panna fled the scene.
The mother of five was moved to the hospital for treatment following the deadly attack.
While she survived the attack, Anita lost her baby, a boy.
While the case was registered in September 2020, it resurfaced again after the husband was sentenced to life in prison.
During the court proceedings, Panna Lal claimed that Anita had cut herself to file a false case against him as he was in a property dispute with her brothers.
