Lucknow: A man in Uttar Pradesh was on Friday sentenced to life imprisonment for committing a heinous crime at home.
In September 2020, Panna Lal, a resident of Civil Lines in Badaun, had attacked his pregnant wife Anita with a sickle and cut open her stomach to check if she carrying a boy or a girl.
The couple had five daughters from their 22-year marriage. Panna desperately wanted a son, and used to fight regularly with his wife.
When the woman’s family tried to convince Panna to stop misbehaving, he threatened to divorce Anita and marry another woman to father a son.
On the day of the incident, the couple again fought over the gender of the unborn baby. Before long, an enraged Panna wanted to check if Anita was pregnant with a boy or a girl. When Anita resisted, Panna threatened to kill her.
As he attacked her with a sickle, Anita tried to run away. Panna grabbed her, cornered Anita and used the sickle to slit open her stomach.
Anita, who was eight months pregnant then, told the court that the cut was so deep that her intestines were left hanging from her stomach.
As she ran out of home in that precarious condition, her brother, who worked at a nearby shop, heard her screams and came to her rescue. Panna fled the scene, and Anita was rushed to a nearby hospital.
She survived the attack but her baby, a boy, could not be saved.
Panna argued in court that Anita had inflicted the wounds on herself to lodge a false case against him as he was in a property dispute with her brothers.
Ultimately, justice prevailed.
