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tv   The Midwifes Confession  BBC News  September 15, 2024 4:30am-5:01am BST

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it was hard to explain to those young men why i was so moved. was it because they had saved a life? was it because the child had come so close to dying? or was i weeping for those other babies? girls, all of them, who had been thrown away or murdered, in the 30 years i have been
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following this story.
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the woman confessing to killing newborn baby girls, dharmi devi, is a midwife. and she was not the only one. i shot this footage nearly 30 years ago. i was a young reporter back then, hungry forstories. i had heard about a case of infanticide in katihar, close to my hometown, so i set off into the villages of bihar to see if it was true.
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hakiya is talking about upper—caste families. the midwives came almost entirely from the lower castes. they often told me they did not want to kill baby girls. but refusing orders from these
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families was unthinkable. after hakiya spoke up, other midwives found the courage to tell their stories. rani was the next to confess. of all the midwives, she looked the most troubled.
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rani died a long time ago. so did hakiya and dharmi. so did hakiya and dharmi. but there was one midwife but there was one midwife who would not confess. who would not confess.
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i did not know it at the time, but it was this midwife, siro devi, whose story i would follow for the next three decades. i was not the only one troubled by these killings.
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if the 1995 report's estimates are accurate, more than 1,000 baby girls were being murdered every year in one district by just 35 midwives. according to the report, bihar at the time had more than half a million midwives. the names of the midwives were changed to protect their identities. hakiya is mentioned, rani is there and so is siro.
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siro had been a midwife since she was a child. she was doing this work when i met her 30 years ago. she's still doing it today.
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year after year, i went back to visit siro and saw how hard it was for her
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to make ends meet. she was the sole breadwinner, raising two sons and three daughters... ..three daughters who all needed a dowry in order to be married. a dowry could be anything — cash, jewellery, utensils. but for many families in india, the girl has to bring something
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as a condition of marriage. it is the dowry system that makes sons into assets and daughters into liabilities. all the midwives told me this is the reason why so many baby girls were killed at birth. over the years, a trust had grown between us. but only once in three decades did siro confess that she had killed baby girls
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with her own hands.
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by the time i filmed the confessions, some of the midwives working with anila had started saving baby girls from being killed by their own families. these girls would be young women now, almost 30. some of them had been adopted, but no—one knew where they were.
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the report from the �*90s made no mention of the girls who had been saved. but it contained the name medha shekhar.
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in the 1990s, medha was working in patna, documenting cases of infa nticide. soon after, the babies rescued by the midwives started arriving at her ngo. she helped send at least one of those babies to an adoption agency in pune.
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hello. in the forecast for sunday, we both have sunshine and some rain. but the rain isn't going to be particularly widespread, and with a bit of luck, most of us will have a fine,
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dry day. let's have a look at the satellite picture. here's the weather front sweeping towards us earlier on. that's brought the damp weather to parts of wales and northern england, and through the course of sunday, the weather front will drift a little bit further south and then eventually will rain itself out. so, through the early hours, the damp weather from northern wales, through merseyside, parts of lancashire and yorkshire. to the north and to the south, the skies will be generally clear, and our temperatures early on sunday morning in the range of 8—13 celsius. so here's the weather front, then, through the irish sea, northern wales, most of northern england. occasionally it will be wet. some of the bursts of rain could be at least for a time heavy, but i think as we go through the course of the afternoon, that rain should eventually peter out. we'll also have showers across scotland, and then for most of us it should be at the very least a bright day. really quite sunny in the south and the south—east, where we'll
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have the highest temperatures — 20 celsius. here's that weather front as it moves southwards and also gently drifts towards the east. it eventually rains itself out. the forecast for monday shows fine conditions across most of the uk. a large area of high pressure with light winds. feeling very pleasant in that sunshine, and i think widely temperatures should reach the high teens, and probably exceed 20 celsius in one or two spots. so a beautiful start to the week for most of us. now, the high pressure is indeed going to stick around for the next few days. it'll anchor itself over the uk. we're right in the middle of it, and it's not in a hurry to budge. now, the very far north—west of the uk will be potentially clipped by weather fronts, so maybe thicker cloud here at times and some spots of rain. but the vast majority of us are in the centre of that high, so sunny conditions, light winds, and look at these temperatures. whether you're north or south, it'll be around the high teens or perhaps even in excess of 20 celsius. now, the high will change shape and there will be changes in the wind direction, so there might be one or two
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showers sneaking in, particularly into southern parts of the uk. but overall, the message is looking dry, bright and really quite warm. bye— bye.
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live from london, this is bbc news. thousands of homes are destroyed and people displaced in parts of eastern and central europe, after torrential rain causes severe flooding. a prisonerfreed under the uk government's early release scheme is rearrested — accused of sexually assaulting a woman on the same day. two hospitals in springfield, ohio go into lockdown after receiving bomb threats as donald trump doubles down on false claims about migrants eating household pets.
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hello. i'm frankie mccamley. more bad weather is forecast for sunday across parts of central and eastern europe after torrential rain caused severe flooding. at least four people have died in romania. thousands of homes have been destroyed and people displaced. in the czech republic, thousands of members of the emergency services are on high alert. several people are missing. the rain, caused by cyclone boris, has mainly hit the eastern part of romania. authorities are creating displacement camps and sending emergency aid to those forced to evacuate their homes. the torrential rain has also hit several other countries in the region — including the czech republic — where 38 locations have declared the highest flood alert. authorities there say the worst rainfall and flood risk should be experienced in the coming 2a to 48 hours. poland, too, has also experienced heavy rain.

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