To arrest this social vandalism that eliminates girls in wombs and to create awareness among the families that steadfastly prefer sons only, students have now come forward to join hands with social groups that battle in the field.

About 250 post-graduate women students of Salem Periyar University launched a dawn-to-dusk and house-to-house ‘Save Girl Child’ crusade in villages and hamlets in the block on Thursday.

Organised by its NSS wing and Salem Youth Red Cross Society, they had split into 12 groups and fanned out in Sarakkapillaiyur and near-by hamlets for an intense ‘pro-girl child campaign’.

The students also betrayed no hesitance to issue stern warnings against those who preach and justify their ‘son-preference attitude’ at the cost of girls.

It was a soul-satisfying experience, said a student after her day-long campaign under the scorching sun that touched 37.6 degrees Celsius, the highest in Tamil Nadu on Thursday.

Vice-Chancellor M. Thangaraju, while expressing his anguish at the alarming fall in the birth ratio of girl children in the block near which the university is situated, said the institution, following the high ideals of social reformer Periyar, would take the fight effectively against the social scourge to every doorstep in the days to come.