Bihar’s midwives confess to assisting female infanticide in a new documentary, ‘The Midwife’s Confession’

Amitabh, as narrator in the documentary, explains, “If the 1995 report’s estimates are accurate, more than a thousand girl babies were being murdered every year in one district by 35 midwives. Bihar, at the time, had more than half-a-million midwives.” According to the report, Siro had allegedly killed around 16 babies. Through Anila, Amitabh gradually gained trust within the community of midwives. Two years ago, BBC Eye Investigations stepped in to tell their story, which is now a 63-minute documentary, called ‘The Midwife’s Confession’. Directed by Amitabh and Syed Ahmed Safi, the documentary accompanies Amitabh on his journey from Katihar to Pune and back to reunite Monica with the women who had saved her. This journey is intercut with interviews Amitabh has recorded over the past three decades, in the midwives’ homes and the surrounding fields.

Through Anila, Amitabh gradually gained trust within the community of midwives. (Photo: BBC Eye Investigations)

Hakiya Devi, one of the midwives talks about her clients. “Brahmin, Rajput, Bhumihar, Vaishya-Baniya – these people would say they needed to give a lot of dowry (if it was a girl child).” Often, midwives came from the lower castes and refusing orders was unthinkable. Hakiya says, “If we went to the police, we would get into trouble. If we spoke up, people would threaten us. The midwife was in trouble from all sides.”

For Siro, too, caste joined forces with patriarchy to create a burden that weighed upon her conscience. She became a midwife, following in the footsteps of women that came before her. “I didn’t even know how to wear a sari. I was 10 or 12 years old. My grandmother sent me to someone’s house to work,” she says, in the documentary.

Payment for their services, too, was unstructured. “When a boy is born, there’s more happiness. For a girl, it’s a little less. They give me whatever they are happy with,” says Siro, the sole breadwinner in a family with three daughters. She, too, had to accumulate wealth for their dowries.

In the interaction after the film’s screening at the BBC New Delhi Bureaux, Amitabh elaborated upon the conditions that Katihar’s midwives faced in the 90s. “The average delivery would just be Rs 10 or 20 and a little rice. Killing a baby would get them Rs 100 or 200,” he says. Syed adds that sometimes, they (upper-caste families) promised money for the killing but never paid. Hakiya recalls that they used to stand behind them with sticks, forcing them to kill the babies.

With Anila’s backing, Siro, Hakiya, and Bhaago(Hakiya’s sister) stopped killing babies and started saving them instead, by getting them to an adoption agency in Patna. Monica was one the babies they saved. Siro had to breast feed her till arrangements could be made for her travel. Before Monica returns to Pune, she tells Amitabh, “When you said they (Siro and Anila) wanted to see me, I related that to when someone puts a lot of effort in preparing for an exam. They did the hard work, and now they are curious to see the result.”

Despite a lack of formal education, the midwives have been experts in their field. In the documentary, Anila explains, “Bhaago Devi was more experienced than the doctors at the time. If they struggled with a delivery case, they would call her.” In a fairer world, Siro and Bhaago would have perhaps attended a nursing college similar to the one Monica teaches in.

The Midwife’s Confession is currently streaming on YouTube, on BBC World Service.

Samveg Chauhan is an intern with The Indian Express