Ultrasound centres, nursing homes in Punjab connive to mislead couples who desire male children, reports Ajay Bharatwaj.
CHANDIGARH: Doctors in Punjab who make a fast buck by illegally aborting female foetuses have found a new way to boost their income. They fool couples into having even their male children aborted, claiming the foetuses are female. Each hush-hush operation earns a doctor anywhere between Rs10,000 to Rs20,000.
The shock: The bizarre trend came to light in Nangal town in Punjab’s Ropar district this week, when police recovered three aborted foetuses, two of which were male. Ropar Senior Superintendent of Police Kapil Dev said that Gurbax Singh, who runs the nursing home where the foetuses were recovered, admitted that he had made at least a dozen couples abort their male children, telling them it was female foeticide.
Singh has been arrested and police are interrogating the owner of a nearby ultrasound centre, who is accused of collaborating with him.
A similar trend was seen in Patiala district, where police recovered more than 50 decomposed foetuses in August this year. Patiala zone Inspector General of Police SK Sharma said at least 20 of these were male. The foetuses had been buried in a well close to a nursing home run by one Pritam Singh and his wife, Amarjit Kaur.
The plot: During interrogation, the Patiala couple admitted to having aborted more than 150 foetuses in the past year-and-a-half. They said the cases were referred to them by nearby ultrasound centres where sex-determination tests were conducted. The two shifted blame on to these centres, which they claimed gave wrong reports.
However, police suspect the nursing home owners worked in connivance with the ultrasound centres to mislead couples who approached them.
Dr VS Mohi, a civil surgeon in Patiala, said the recovered foetuses were found wrapped in polythene bags, and were mostly decomposed, making the well a veritable graveyard. The nursing home has been sealed since then, and a case registered against the couple under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act.
The guilty: Dr Mohi said the health authorities have failed to check the functioning of an illegal nursing home run by unqualified people. Ultrasound centres in the area have also been carrying out sex-determination tests without any checks, he said.
At least a dozen such centres have been identified by the district health authorities in the towns bordering Patiala. Some of these are in neighbouring Haryana, with which Patiala district shares a border. Licences of three ultrasound centres have been cancelled, while a task force has been constituted to identify other defaulters in the region.
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