BHUBANESWAR Thirty plastic bags stuffed with skulls and body parts that police believe may be from aborted female foetuses or newborn girls killed because their families wanted boys have been found in an abandoned well in eastern India.

Investigators suspect a medical clinic nearby performed the abortions and possibly killed infants at the parents' request, although authorities have yet to conclusively determine the sex of the babies.

Yogesh Bahadur Khurania, a senior police official in Orissa state, said police were also still trying to work out how many babies had been dumped in the well near the Krishna Clinic. The CNN-IBN television news channel said authorities believed as many as 37 bodies had been found.

The owner and manager of the clinic have been detained for questioning.

Khuriana said police are investigating if the clinic in Nayagarh was determining the sex of foetuses, a practice that is illegal in India but remains widespread.

The police have been investigating female infanticide in the town since the discovery of five female foetuses in an abandoned house earlier this month.

Abortions are legal in India and are seen as a way to curb population growth, but facilities are limited and rural women often resort to abortions performed under unsafe conditions. Abortions on the basis of gender are illegal.

However, many Indian families see daughters as a liability because of a tradition requiring a bride's family to pay the groom's family a large dowry. Girls often do not receive the same education as boys and many do not receive adequate medical treatment.

Last year, international researchers estimated that up to 10 million female foetuses had been aborted in the past decade in India, creating a gender imbalance.

There were 927 women for every 1000 men in the 2001 census.-AP