I’ve written here a couple of times before about India’s shocking record on women’s rights, and particularly its cultural bias which means – thanks to female infanticide and now, increasingly, selective abortion – that up to 5o MILLION women could be missing from its population.

This was also the subject of my feature that almost won me a place in the Guardian’s international development journalism comp, a couple of months ago. (I was longlisted).

Anyway, Rita Banerji, an Indian campaigner and friend who works ceaselessly to highlight this very pressing issue, has been in touch with me to update me on the situation of Dr Mitu Khurana, a doctor I met last year in Delhi who is taking her husband and in-laws to court. (I last wrote about her HERE).

It’s a brave step. When they found out she was carrying twin daughters, Mitu’s in-laws tried to force her to have an abortion. When she refused, she alleges she suffered physical and mental abuse which forced her to eventually flee and return to her parents’ home.

This case is I think unusual for several reasons. As an educated, professional Indian, perhaps Mitu has more independence than many women who find themselves in her situation. Also though, she has a supportive family. Often the cultural pressures can be so great that women’s own families won’t support them in their choices.

What’s also interesting about Mitu’s case though is that it highlights that the preference for boy children is not a simple thing. Her in-laws are middle class professionals…exactly the group which Banerji says are now often choosing to abort female foetuses. Such is the problem in India that hospitals are not meant to reveal the gender of an unborn child – a minor detail that a baksheesh, or bribe, will often overcome.

Banerji writes: “Mitu’s husband who has not yet been booked, I think is trying to put pressure for a divorce. He has now filed for custody of the girls. And NDTV India’s largest english TV news channel covered it recently but there’s no action from the goverment yet.
“We want to put pressure on the Indian gov. through the UK government to act on the PNDT law [1994 Act, one of whose aims is “the prevention of the misuse of such techniques for the purpose of pre-natal sex determination leading to female foeticide”]
“We want this really to impact on India certainly, but also on the expat Indians who just fly into Delhi for sex selected abortions when they can’t do it in the UK.”

Mitu’s plight has recently been covered on the UK blog Pickled Politics and was touched on last year in the Observer.