However, this is not an easy reunion. The tears that Siro sheds have a sordid past. Siro and a few other Indian midwives were frequently under pressure to kill baby females, just prior to Monica’s birth.
Evidence points to Monica as one they were able to save.
Since I traveled to the Indian state of Bihar in 1996 to meet Siro and four other rural midwives, I have been following her tale for thirty years.
A non-governmental organization had exposed them as the perpetrators of the killings of infant girls in the Katihar district, where they had given in to pressure from the parents of the babies.
The eldest midwife I spoke with, Hakiya Devi, admitted to me at the time that she had killed 12 or 13 newborns. Dharmi Devi, another midwife, acknowledged killing at least fifteen people more.
The way the data was collected makes it impossible to determine the precise number of babies they may have murdered.
However, they were mentioned in a 1995 NGO study that was based on interviews with them and thirty other midwives. If the report’s estimations are correct, just 35 midwives were responsible for the annual murder of over 1,000 baby girls in one district. The report stated that there were more than 500,000 midwives in Bihar at the time. Furthermore, babyicide was not exclusive to Bihar.
