Amidst the ongoing campaign to completely eradicate the menace of female foeticide in the state as per the directions of Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann, the Punjab Health and Family Welfare Department has busted three illegal sex determination rackets including in Kharar, Dera Bassi and Moga, said Punjab Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Balbir Singh here on Thursday.
He said that acting on secret information regarding illegal sex determination tests being done at these specific locations, health teams from Ludhiana and Barnala planned a special operation to bust these rackets. “Our health teams along with the police teams took a pregnant woman as a decoy to these centres and caught the culprits red-handed while conducting sex determination tests on these decoys,” he said.
Dr Balbir Singh said that in Dera Bassi, a quack has also been apprehended, who used to lure people with the promise of a male child by giving some special medicine. Director of Family Welfare Dr Hitinder Kaur lauded the efforts of Assistant Director Dr Vineet Nagpal, who coordinated these raids at a state level and both the Civil Surgeons— Ludhiana and Barnala.
She said that the Barnala team, during its raid in Moga, has also recovered an unregistered ultrasound machine and Rs 15000 paid to the accused to carry out sex determination tests, besides, recovering other instruments and medicines used for carrying out abortions from the spot.
In the raid conducted by the Ludhiana team in Kharar, a gynaecologist and two more persons were caught red-handed, she said, while adding that a case under the PC-PNDT act has been registered against the accused in all three cases.