Gurugram: Illegal Sex Determination Racket Busted, Doctor among three arrested

Gurugram: In a raid carried out by the health department at an ultrasound clinic near Haileymandi on Pataudi road, three people comprising a doctor have been arrested for allegedly running a prenatal sex determination racket, informed the police. 

The Hindustan Times reports that the police informed that the accused had charged around Rs 75,000 per family/pregnant woman from Delhi, Jhajjar, Pataudi and other neighbouring areas who came there for determining the sex of the foetus after registering them using fake names in the clinic. 

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According to the police, a team was formed after the health department received information about the racket. To bust the racket, the department set up a pregnant woman as a decoy customer and asked one of their clerks to play the role of her husband. After the sex determination process was over, the team performed a raid at the clinic on Saturday, following which they arrested three men. 

The accused doctor was identified as Puneet Gupta, who performed ultrasonography of pregnant women inside the clinic while the two others, identified as Mahesh and Abhimanyu brought pregnant women to the clinic. 

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

The complaint was filed by Dr Pardeep Kumar, deputy civil surgeon cum Pre-natal Diagnostic Technique (PNDT) Act nodal officer. Based on that, an FIR was filed 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. 

Out of the two suspects who are on the run, the police said that one of them had been impersonating a doctor using someone else's licence and practised at a clinic near the main bus stand in Farrukh Nagar. 

The decoy woman and the health department clerk were first asked to contact Mahesh. Mahesh then called the clerk, impersonating a husband at the Farrukh Nagar clinic and introduced him to the impersonating doctor, following which they finalized a deal for sex determination at Rs 70,000. 

The fake doctor gave the husband a contact person to which he transferred ₹25,000 as a token amount on June 13 after receiving directions from the deputy surgeon. The remaining amount, Rs 45,000 was paid in cash at the Farrukh Nagar clinic on June 23, reports the HT. 

According to the police, the 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.

After Gupta performed the ultrasonography of the pregnant woman and determined that the foetus inside her was a girl, she came out Mahesh and Abhimanyu and simultaneously signalled the team. The team eventually arrested the Mahesh and Abhimanyu, and then the doctor from inside the clinic. 

The health department, during the raid, found no entry in the PNDT register at the Haileymandi clinic after June 10 even though 10 ultrasounds were performed on Saturday and 18 more on Friday. As per the law, the investigators said that the Form-F required to be filled for performing ultrasonography of pregnant women was only partially filled or not touched at all in some cases. 

The register, documents and the ultrasound machine used for sex determination were seized from the clinic during the raid, said the police. 

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