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₹20,000 for female foeticide: Panchkula doc, peon file for pre-arrest bail
Court issues notice to police, seeking a reply within a day
On the run since being booked for allegedly seeking ₹20,000 for aborting a female foetus, Dr Poonam Bhargav, a gynaecologist at the Panchkula civil hospital, moved an anticipatory bail application in a local court on Friday.
Police said the co-accused in the case, Baljinder, a peon at the hospital, had also moved a similar bail application on Thursday.
The court has issued notice to the police seeking a reply by Saturday, the scheduled date of hearing.
Sources said the peon in her bail plea said her name had cropped up in the matter just because her duty was with the doctor. She has stated that they had not done any crime as the abortion was not carried out.
COPS CLOSE ON THEIR HEELS
Meanwhile, the police are also working on the mobile location of the doctor and her call details for leads to trace her and the peon. A police team had raided their residences on Friday also, but to no avail. Sector 7 police post in-charge sub-inspector (SI) Brij Pal said, “The accused are at large and their mobile phones are also switched off.”
Police said as per initial probe, it has been learnt that the woman that accompanied the complainant was unmarried and the test reports discussed with the doctor for abortion to be of any other woman cannot be ruled out.
Bhargav was suspended on Sunday by Haryana health minister Anil Vij, after a video of her striking the alleged deal surfaced. The civil surgeon had received video clippings of the deal from two Patiala men — Amandeep Singh and Vinay Arora — on February 20. The committee had also raided Bhargav’s house in Sector 16, Panchkula, and seized various kinds of allopathic medicines in the form of injectables, mostly used for conducting abortion. The inquiry report said Bhargav had confessed to have taken ₹8,000 advance for the abortion.
