NEW DELHI: Villagers in eastern India rescued a newborn baby girl who was found buried alive, officials said on Monday, the latest case in the country highlighting the problem of female infanticide.

The girl — believed to no more than six hours old — was left to die in a shallow sand pit in a field when a passerby spotted her feet poking through the ground on Saturday.

The baby, found in Jajpur district in impoverished Odisha state, was rushed to hospital where she is under observation, officials said.

“She is doing fine and all her parameters are normal. She is a full term baby, weighing around 2.5 kg,” chief medical officer Jajpur district Fanindra Kumar Panigrahi said.

“Her umbilical cord was intact and body was still covered with vernix.” he said.

Hospital Staff have named the girl Dharitri, a Sanskrit word meaning “the earth”.

The girl will be handed over to the state-run child welfare committee after she is discharged from the hospital.

Police said that they suspect the newborn was either abandoned by her parents because of her gender or the mother had been an unmarried woman. “We are trying to track the parents of the girl”.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2017