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Haryana treating errant doctors with kid gloves
Geetanjali Gayatri/TNS

Chandigarh, April 5
Officials in Haryana continue to blame neighbouring Rajasthan for not doing enough to clamp down on banned sex-determination tests in ultrasound clinics. But official statistics indicate that the state has not done enough in Haryana itself against errant doctors.

Official figures, for example, claim that as many as 133 ultrasound clinics were “seized and sealed” in the state while registration of 277 more such clinics were “suspended or cancelled”. During the same period, however, the state launched prosecution against only 54 errant doctors and just 28 of them were convicted.

Doctors in the state appear to have taken enormous trouble to set up clandestine operations. One such unregistered ultrasound clinic was discovered in Mahendragarh last month by a decoy engaged by the state’s health department. Dr Rekha Yadav and Dr Narender Yadav had converted the first floor of a rented ‘farmhouse’ to run the operation. They would drive groups of women to the farmhouse for the tests and later drive them back to the main road before returning to their clinic in the town.

The decoy, however, managed to retrace her steps back to the farmhouse, following which an FIR was lodged against the doctor couple and the unauthorised ultrasound machine seized and the clinic sealed. Both of them, however, are absconding since then.

Significantly, the couple had been caught earlier as well but no action was taken against them. “The Department had sealed one of their unregistered machines in 2007 also but no police case was registered then by the then Civil Surgeon,” said Dr Ishwar Anand, Civil Surgeon of Mahendragarh.

Against a sex ratio of 818 in 2001, Mahendergarh has reported only 778 girls per 1000 in the 2011 census.

The civil surgeon, Jhajjar, Bharat Singh, says, “The PNDT Act 1994 in its present form is ineffective in checking malpractices. “Results will come only when the doctor alone is booked under the Act,” he argues. Till the agencies manage to get their act together, time is fast running out for Haryana’s girl child.