Gurgaon, Mar 16: A local court has sentenced five doctors to three years rigorous imprisonment for carrying our pre-natal sex determination tests.
Judicial Magistrate Archana Yadav also slapped a fine of Rs 1000 on each of the convicts. It they fail to pay the fine, the convicts would would have to undergo additional 15 days of rigorous imprisonment.
The convicted doctors have been identified as J L Mahajan of Palam Vihar, M S Talekar, DB Lal, B Lal of Sector 4 and Dr KK Saraswat of New Palam Vihar, said Civil Surgeon Gurgaon Parveen Garg, who is also Appropriate Authority under the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act-1994.
In January 2002, then Civil Surgeon NK Jain had filed a complaint against Dr J L Mahajan for allegedly illegally conducting pre-natal gender tests on pregnant women at Albega Hospital in Udyog Vihar.
The then Civil Surgeon constituted a team consisting of Vishesh Kumar and R K Chugh to conduct a raid on his clinic, during which Vishesh acted as a decoy customer and the doctors were allegedly caught red-handed while carrying out the banned test or assisting in it.
All the five doctors have been convicted under Section 23 of the PNDT Act. PTI
