Friday, February 25, 2011

Illegal abortion: 2-year jail for docs

23 Feb, 2011 0409hrs IST TNN
BATHINDA: In a one of its kind conviction for wrong sex determination and illegal termination of pregnancy in this part of Punjab, which is already infamous for its skewed sex ratio, a court in Faridkot on Tuesday sentenced two doctors of the town to two years of imprisonment for indulging in illegal abortion.

Interestingly in this case, both the guilty doctors helped in the termination of a three-month-old foetus, deeming it to be female, but after the abortion the foetus was found to be male. The ‘wrong’ sex determination and its termination led to a lot of protest and uproar by the same family which went for abortion thinking the foetus was of a female.

The case against the doctors, Manveer Kumar and Raminder, was filed after the health department submitted a complaint in the court. As per the complaint, a class-IV woman employee in civil hospital Faridkot approached Dr Manveer for sex determination test at the time of her daughter-in-law’s third pregnancy, as the latter already had two daughters.

On January 23, 2007, Dr Manveer Kumar concluded from an ultrasound examination that the foetus was female and on the request of the family members it was terminated by Dr Raminder.

But once the foetus was given to family members to be buried, it was found to be of a male. In utter shock, the family members blamed the guilty doctors for wrong sex determination test and killing the male foetus.

No comments:

Post a Comment