Three including doctor arrested for running prenatal sex determination racket

Three people, including a doctor, were arrested for allegedly running a prenatal sex determination racket after a health department team conducted a raid at an ultrasound clinic near Haileymandi on Pataudi road on Saturday, said police on Sunday

Three people, including a doctor, were arrested for allegedly running a prenatal sex determination racket after a health department team conducted a raid at an ultrasound clinic near Haileymandi on Pataudi road on Saturday, said police on Sunday.

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Police said the racketeers charged around ₹75,000 per family/pregnant woman from Delhi, Jhajjar, Pataudi and other neighbouring areas for sex determination of the foetus after registering them with fake names at the clinic.

Police said that the health department had received information about the racket, following which a team was formed. The health department set up a pregnant woman as a decoy customer and asked one of their clerks to play the role of her husband. The team conducted a raid at the clinic on Saturday soon after the sex determination process was over and arrested three men.

According to police, the arrested doctor identified as Puneet Gupta, was the one who allegedly used to carry out ultrasonography of pregnant women inside the clinic while the two others, identified as Mahesh and Abhimanyu (known by their first names) were touts, who used to bring pregnant women to the clinic.

Inspector Rakesh Kumar, station house officer of Pataudi police station, said the suspects are in police remand for a day for interrogation and that they would be produced before a court on Monday. “It will soon become clear since when they were running the racket and how many such sex-determination tests they have perfomed so far,” said Kumar.

Based on a complaint lodged by Dr Pardeep Kumar, deputy civil surgeon cum Pre-natal Diagnostic Technique (PNDT) Act nodal officer, an FIR was registered against five people, including the three arrested men, under various sections of the PNDT Act and sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC at Pataudi police station on Saturday night.

Police said of the two suspects on the run, one of them was impersonating as a doctor using someone else’s licence and practised at a clinic near the main bus stand in Farrukh Nagar.

According to police, the decoy woman and her health department clerk, who posed as her husband, were first tasked to contact Mahesh. Mahesh called the husband at the Farrukh Nagar clinic and introduced him to the impersonating doctor. A deal for sex determination was finalized for ₹70,000.

Police said the impersonating doctor provided the husband a contact number, to which he transferred ₹25,000 as a token amount on June 13 after getting directions from the deputy surgeon. The remaining amount of ₹45,000 was paid in cash at the Farrukh Nagar clinic on June 23.

Police said the decoy pregnant woman was called at Yakubpur, Jhajjar, on Saturday, from where the impersonating doctor took her to the clinic near Haileymandi while Mahesh and Abhimanyu followed them on another motorcycle.

Police said after Gupta performed the ultrasonography of the pregnant woman and determined that the foetus inside her was a girl, she came out with Mahesh and Abhimanyu and signalled the raiding team, which first arrested the touts and then the doctor from inside the clinic.

During the raid, the health department found that no entry was made in the PNDT register at the Haileymandi clinic after June 10 while 10 ultrasounds were carried out on Saturday and 18 more on Friday. Investigators said that either the Form-F required to be filled up as per law for carrying out ultrasonography of pregnant women was partially filled or not touched at all.

Police said the register, documents and the ultrasound machine used for sex determination was seized from the clinic.