AHMEDABAD: Indian police in the western state of Gujarat have arrested a man accused of killing his six-day-old twin daughters by burying them alive, a police officer said on Friday.

“The father considered the infants as a sign of misfortune,” G.S. Malik, superintendent of police, said. “He murdered the six-day-old babies by burying them in a ditch.”

Female infanticide and foeticide, though illegal in India, are still prevalent in a country where boys are traditionally preferred to girls as breadwinners, and families have to stump up costly dowries to marry off their daughters.

Samantsinh Sodha, a petrol pump attendant in Nakhatrana village, 450 km north of Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city, was incensed by the birth of his daughters, his wife said in a complaint filed with police this week. She told officers he beat her for giving birth to the girls. The government admitted last December that probably 10 million girls have been killed by parents in the past 20 years.—Reuters