India, Aug. 31 -- In July 2025, a woman in Haryana's Kaithal district allegedly suffocated her newborn and hid the body in a cattle shed. In April 2025, police in Bengaluru found a stillborn infant dumped in a garbage bag after a minor gave birth in secret. In April 2026, villagers near Dumka, Jharkhand, rescued a baby abandoned in a sack by a forest road. They are symptoms of a legal system that treats an infant's (0-12 months) survival as an afterthought.

A preventable, recurring pattern The cases above are not isolated tragedies. They are representative of a systemic collapse repeating across slums, villages and city outskirts alike. The bias behind them runs deeper than geography: up to 90% of India's abandoned infants are girls, a p...