“Every year, around 4 lakh girls are killed before they are born.”

Our finding

Why we rated this “Misleading”

The figure has a source, and a date

Sex-selective abortion is a documented reality in India, and nothing in what follows should be read as disputing that it happens or that it matters.

The number itself traces to a UNFPA estimate built on data from 2013 to 2017, which put the figure at around 4.6 lakh. [1] It is a serious estimate from a credible body.

It is also not a current annual count. Presenting a 2013-2017 estimate in 2026 as the number of girls being lost *every year now* attributes to the present a measurement taken from an earlier period.

How long the problem has been measured

The framing implies something recent. The measurement history says otherwise.

UNFPA's earlier work estimated roughly 570,000 girls missing annually to gender-biased sex selection over 2001-2008. [2]

Set the two estimates side by side — about 5.7 lakh a year in the 2001-2008 window, about 4.6 lakh in the 2013-2017 window — and two things follow. Gender-biased sex selection is a long-running problem that considerably predates 2014. And the direction of travel between those two measurements is downward.

What the trend indicator shows

For a question about whether things are improving or worsening, the sex ratio at birth is the standard measure, because it is tracked continuously rather than estimated periodically.

Health Management Information System data records the ratio rising from 918 girls per 1,000 boys in 2014-15 to 929 in 2024-25 — an improvement of 11 points. [3]

That is meaningful movement in the right direction. It is also worth being precise about what it does not mean: 929 is still well below the biologically expected ratio of roughly 950 or above. An improving number and an unacceptable number can describe the same figure, and here they do.

Where the claim goes wrong

The problem is not the subject. It is the tense.

A dated estimate is presented as a present-day annual toll, in a framing that implies the situation is static or worsening. The continuously tracked indicator shows improvement across the same period — modest, incomplete, but consistent.

What this analysis does not claim

Sex-selective abortion has not been solved. A sex ratio at birth of 929 means the practice continues at scale, and every point of that gap represents real families making real decisions against daughters.

The correction here is narrow and specific: the figure quoted is not current, and the trend it is used to imply runs opposite to the measured direction. That is a separate matter from whether the underlying problem deserves urgent attention. It does.

In short

The 4.6 lakh estimate comes from 2013-2017 data, not from this year. The sex ratio at birth improved from 918 to 929 over the past decade — real progress on a problem that remains far from resolved.