Police find 12 fetuses dumped in western Indian city of Ahmadabad

Police find 12 fetuses dumped in India

AHMADABAD, India — Police found 12 fetuses dumped near a garbage bin in a western Indian city on Monday, a police officer said.

Residents in Ahmadabad, the main city of Gujarat state, alerted police about the fetuses lying close to the bin, officer Mansingh Dabhi told The Associated Press.

It was unclear where the fetuses came from. Dabhi said they may have been dumped by hospitals in the area.

The fetuses were sent to a government-run hospital for post-mortem and to determine their sex, he said.

The practice of aborting female fetuses is widespread in India with a preference for male children.

While abortion is legal in India, sex-determination tests were outlawed in 1991.

The Lancet, the British medical journal, has estimated as many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in the country over the last two decades.