Pooja in Ahmedabad on Wednesday. Picture by Yogesh Chawda

Ahmedabad, July 25: Another Pooja has raised the banner of revolt against the atrocities of a male-dominated society.

The mother of twins has filed a police complaint against her husband and in-laws for forcing her to twice abort a girl child.

Pooja Salot, living separately with her 10-year-olds for the past month, hasn’t marched down the streets half-naked, like Pooja Chauhan did in Rajkot earlier this month, but both are united in the aim to bring their tormentors at home to shame.

“My in-laws forced me to abort twice. I could not fight then because I was too young and was too worried about my daughters,” said the 32-year-old married for 11 years. Pooja is also determined to fight a divorce notice.

The courage to file the complaint came from daughters Dhwani and Dhruvi, who told their mother that it was time to speak out against the “mental and physical torture”.

“My daughters understand everything, the way they have been neglected and the way the entire family harassed me. They told me to decide. This has given me the moral strength to fight,” said Pooja, adding that she put up with the abuse all these years for the sake of her children.

The payback may have begun. Soon after her complaint on Sunday, husband Chirag Salot, father-in-law Suresh and others were arrested on foeticide and dowry-harassment charges. Two doctors, Sanat Joshi and his father Rajan Joshi, who conducted the abortions in 1998 and 2001, are missing. They have been named in the complaint.

But on Monday, just when Pooja’s battle against the injustice began, she received a divorce notice from Chirag. The papers were filed on July 19 without informing her.

But she isn’t ready to let her husband off with the divorce. “Chirag wants to get married, I don’t. I will fight for the rights of my daughters,” she said, adding that she was aware of the kind of influence her rich in-laws could wield in the legal battle. She claims she is being threatened to withdraw her complaint or “face the consequences”.

But Pooja is armed with a crucial piece of evidence against her husband. Last December, he had given an undertaking, written on a stamp paper, promising not to harass her and their two daughters. But days after the written assurance, Chirag began troubling them again.

Pooja says Chirag, who runs the family’s successful cast-iron business, demanded money from her parents. Her father, a retired state government employee who has settled in Gandhinagar, never got along with the Salots.

Pooja’s case is among the first in Gujarat where a woman has come out against in-laws forcing abortions. Sociologists say the practice is common among the rich and educated people. This partly explains why the state’s sex ratio is so heavily skewed.

According to social scientist Guarang Jani, the travails of Pooja, who comes from an affluent background, reflect the attitude of many of the state’s rich towards their women.