Expired clinic registration, irregularities in Form F, G: IVF specialist sentenced to 2.5 years jail for violating PC PNDT Act

Bhubaneswar: Holding an IVF specialist guilty of violating the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act, 1994, a Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class, Bhubaneswar recently sentenced the doctor to 2.5 years of imprisonment and imposed a penalty of Rs 10,000.

Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class, Bhubaneswar Bhanupratap Mishra convicted Dr. Nabaneeta Padhy, medical director of Femelife Fertility Foundation Private Limited of Gajapati Nagar under Sections 23 and 25 of PC and PNDT Act. While imposing the fine, the court observed that failure to do the same would result in five months of additional imprisonment. 

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For the two violations, the doctor was sentenced to 2.5 years and six months imprisonment on the stipulation that the two sentences will not run concurrently. 

The incident took place on August 30, 2019, when the collector in Khurda decided to conduct a surprise inspection and ask the officials concerned for the same to make sure the rules and provisions of the PC and PNDT Act are being followed by the clinics. Thus, while conducting a verification the at Femelife Fertility in Jayadev Vihar, the officials found that the license of the clinic had expired around 4 months back, on September 15, 2018, as per a media report in The New Indian Express. 

In addition, irregularities were found in Form-F which is a mandatory record having information like the name, address, and others of a pregnant woman undergoing an ultrasound scan, and Form-G which is a form of consent.

The clinic owner had not informed the district authorities about the installation of two ultrasound machines in her clinic, reports the Hindustan Times. Further, the OPD register was not maintained properly in the ultrasound unit and the records for the last two years were not found in the ultrasound unit. The patient reports of the pre-natal scans were not available as well. 

According to National Family Health Survey-5 results released last year, Odisha had 894 females for every 1,000 males compared to 932 in NFHS-4 conducted in 2015-16. Thus, the child sex ratio in Odisha has gone down whereas neighboring states have reported an increase in the same.