Bengaluru, Jan 26 (DHNS): The committee on preventions of crimes against women and children headed by V S Ugrappa has recommended the government to send a special squad to Beltangady taluk in Dakshina Kannada to investigate the large of number of unnatural deaths in the taluk in the last five years.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Ugrappa said that the panel visited various places in Dakshina Kannada district recently and was shocked to learn that there had been 500 unnatural deaths, a majority of them women, in Beltangady taluk alone during the last five years.

“The district administration and the local police are clueless about the large number of deaths. We have sought that the government immediately constitute a special investigation team to probe the deaths”, Ugrappa said.

He said the panel observed that there were 149 medical scanning centres in Dakshina Kannada - more than the number of hospitals in the district.

Sex ratio

The district has a skewed sex ratio. This could be due to female foeticide after illegal sex determination test at some of these centres, Ugrappa said.

He said the conviction rate in Mangaluru and other rural pockets of Dakshina Kannada pertaining to rape cases, atrocities against women, dowry cases was very poor.

There had been only 18 convictions out of the 601 cases of atrocities against women, registered in Mangaluru between 2005 and 2015, he pointed out.