Cuttack: Orissa High Court has expressed concern over the practice of female foeticide.

The single judge bench of Justice S.K. Sahoo felt the concept of equal right and equal status as envisaged in the Constitution "appears unrealistic" when a woman fails to realise her worth and becomes instrumental in cases of female foeticide.

Justice Sahoo said: "Ending the lives of defenceless angels sent by God in the mother's womb creates a dent on the unthinkable conduct of a civilised society."

Justice Sahoo observed this on Tuesday while expressing disinclination to interfere in implicating six doctors for trial in the 2007 Nayagarh female foeticide case in which the state crime branch had probed and submitted charge sheet.

"Since it is a case of 2007, the trial of the case be expedited", Justice Sahoo ordered.

The case had created a furore and hit both national and international headlines.

On July 14, 2017, close to the Nayagarh town at Duburi hill, bodies of seven premature female children were found and later removed by someone. A few days later, bodies of 40 children were found at the Nabaghanpur hill near Nayagarh town.

Soon after 30 packets containing body parts, ostensibly belonging to newborns, were recovered from a dry well close to Nayagarh town.

The recoveries from places close to ultrasound imaging facility indicated that illegal sex determination process was being carried out in nursing homes and clinics so as to do away with lives of female children before birth, during birth or soon after birth, crime branch probe indicated.

On the basis of the charge sheet submitted by the crime branch, the court of sub-divisional judicial magistrate, Nayagarh, took cognisance of the case against the six doctors including - Ramesh Chandra Naik, Surendra Kumar Sarangi, Aurobinda Mohapatra, Prasanta Kumar Sahoo, Ritanjali Mishra and Sanjay Chandra Rao - on September 30, 2008. All six had challenged the SDJM's order in high court in 2010.

The case had since languished till the high court upheld the order of the magistrate, taking cognisance to offences under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act.

However, Justice Sahoo quashed cognisance of offences under the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act.

Under the provisions of the PCPNDT Act, the police are not the appropriate authority to file a charge sheet in such cases. The district magistrate is the appropriate authority to file a complaint.