As with Bhanwari Devi, gross injustice was committed in the Roop Kanwar sati case, when yet another session court in Rajasthan, acquitted all 32 of the accused in October last year.

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994 reiterated the need for appropriate health care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and produce a healthy infant.

The number of maternal deaths that take place every day in India exceeds the total number of such deaths that occurs in all developed countries in a month.

The status of women in many parts of rural India is low. The situation is even worse among tribal communities or primitive societies, which constitute approximately 7.5 percent of the total population of the country [1]. In such