Delhi man arrested for killing newborn twin daughters as family wanted boy

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Police in India's capital New Delhi have arrested a man for allegedly killing his newborn twin daughters.

Neeraj Solanki, 32, was arrested from the neighbouring Haryana state after being on the run for over a month, police said on Wednesday. He has been charged with murder.

He is accused of killing the newborn twins and burying them because his family was “unhappy” about his wife delivering girls, NDTV reported. They wanted a boy instead.

Police launched an investigation after being alerted to the killings of the three-day-old newborns on 3 June.

The caller, who identified as the suspect’s brother-in-law, claimed Mr Solanki killed the two girls and buried them at a crematorium.

The corpses were exhumed on 5 June and sent for autopsy before being handed over to their maternal uncle.

Mr Solanki was booked after his wife filed an official complaint.

The babies were taken away from the mother shortly after birth and she was told they had died of an illness, The Indian Express reported.

In her police complaint, the woman alleged harassment by her in-laws for dowry since her marriage in 2022. She was reportedly made to undergo a prenatal sex determination test which has been banned in India since 1994 to prevent sex-selective abortions.

Indian laws also ban doctors and health workers from sharing an unborn child's sex with the parents.

Police failed to find Mr Solanki for a month as he kept on changing his mobile SIM card and hideouts to evade arrest.

After his arrest, police said, Mr Solanki confessed to killing the newborns.

A 2022 report by the Pew Research Center said at least nine million girls went “missing” in India as a result of female infanticide from 2000 to 2019.

The sex ratio at birth in India, however, has gone up from 918 in 2014-15 to 933 in 2022-23, according to the National Family Health Survey.