The Female Infanticide Prevention Act, 1870, also Act VIII of 1870 was a legislative act passed in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

, to prevent murder of female infants. Section 7 of this Act declared that it was initially applicable only to the territories of Oudh,

North-Western Provinces The North-Western Provinces was an Presidencies and provinces of British India, administrative region in British Raj, British India. The North-Western Provinces were established in 1836, through merging the administrative divisions of the Cede ...

and

Punjab Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...

, but the Act authorized the Governor General to extend the law to any other district or province of the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

at his discretion.

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The British colonial authorities passed the ''Female Infanticide Prevention Act 1870'', under pressure of Christian missionaries and social reformers seeking an end to female infanticides in the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...

. The law's preamble stated that the murder of female infants is believed to be commonly committed in certain parts of British India, and these were Oudh, North-Western Provinces and Punjab. The Act initially applied to these regions. The law authorized the creation of a police force to maintain birth, marriage and death registers, to conduct census of the district at its discretion, enforce a special tax on the district to pay for the expenses and entertainment of said police officers. The Act also stipulated a prison sentence of six months or a fine of thirty thousand rupees, or both, on anyone who disobeyed or obstructed the police officers enforcing the Act. Section 6 of the Act allowed the police officer to seize a child from any person he suspects may neglect or endanger any female child, as well as force collect a monthly fee from that person.

Current status

The Indian practice of female infanticide and of sex-selective abortion have been cited to explain in part a gender imbalance that has been reported as being increasingly distorted since the

1991 Census of India The 1991 census of India was the 13th in a series of censuses held in India every decade since 1871. The population of India was counted as 838,583,988. Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, EOLSS Publishers, Paris, France Retrieved 17 De ...

, although other influences might also affect the trend. The Act was in force until 1981 in Pakistan, when it was superseded by an ordinance.Tahir Wasti, The Application of Islamic Criminal Law in Pakistan: Sharia in Practice, p. 140 footnote 137, BRILL Netherlands (2009)

Notes

{{Reflist Legislation in British India Sex selection in India 1870 in India 1870 in Indian law 1870 in British law Childhood in India