NEONATAL killing is on the rise as bodies of about 210 newborns have been recovered from dustbins, jungles, and roads in the last six years across the country, including the capital. In the last two months, 4 newborn bodies were recovered from the Dhaka University area among which three of them have been seen in decomposed condition. Most of the killed newborns have been autopsied later and based on that autopsy; the Criminal Investigation Department of the police has created a CID DNA profile. But it was not possible to match the DNA as there is no DNA bank. So the father or mother of the dead babies remained unknown.
According to Bangladesh Shisu Odhikar Forum, the bodies of about 20 unidentified newborns have been recovered from roads, dustbins or bushes so far this month. A total of 205 stillbirths were recovered from 2015 to 2020. Globally 2.4 million children died in the first month of life in 2019. There are approximately 7 000 newborn deaths every day, amounting to 47% of all child deaths under the age of 5-years, up from 40% in 1990. UNICEF says Bangladesh has one of the highest neonatal mortality rates in the world where 82,000 newborns die after birth every year. These babies die in the first month of life and half die on the day they are born. Among the major causes of neonatal death in Bangladesh are premature births.
Women and human rights activists say that men and women are getting involved in many extramarital affairs due to social degradation. Neonaticide is the deliberate act of a parent murdering their own child during the first 24 hours of life. With the intrusion of alien culture and western lifestyle, a quarter of youths of the country are being influenced to be intimate in pre-marital relationship and practice illegitimate ties that produce neonaticide as none here to recognize the neonatal in this conventional society.
Neonaticide is a crime, but the cultural components that working behind to liberate the culture and westernize it eventually influences to violet religious and moral principles. Regarding the neonatal death as a heinous crime, the authority should take legal steps and must ensure mother health and nutrition activities.
