3 arrested for torturing woman

The husband and in-laws of a woman, who had forced her to undergo abortion procedures on five occasions to eliminate female foetuses, were arrested by the Vastrapur police, on Sunday. The woman had been subjected to the serial trauma while she was living with her in-laws in Anand.

The arrest was made after the woman, 32-year-old Amisha Yagnik, filed a police complaint against her husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law. The woman has said that her three tormentors not only forced her to abort pregnancies but also demanded dowry and subjected her to mental torture. 

Yagnik returned to her paternal home at Sakal bunglows in Vastrapur about a month ago; she had left Anand to escape the cruelty meted out to her by her in-laws. The police have arrested Amisha's husband Priyavadan Bhatt, her father-in-law Gunvant Bhatt and mother-in-law Niranjana.

According to the details catalogued in the police complaint, Yagnik married Priayavadan Bhatt in December, 2000, in Anand.

Yagnik became pregnant eight months into the marriage. But her in-laws forced her to terminate the pregnancy after sonography carried out at a Anand hospital revealed a female foetus. The Bhatts' desire for a boy child led to four other cases of female foeticide. Yagnik said her daughter, Kamya, could not have been born had the in-laws been given a chance to run a sex-determination test. Kamya was born at Yagnik's family home.