The Solapur police have busted an illegal abortion racket following a raid on a nursing clinic at Mangalvedha in the Solapur district and have arrested six people which includes two doctors and a medicine supplier.

Inspector A R Gade of the Mangalvedha police station while speaking to TOI said they suspect that sex determination tests are being conducted on pregnant women before getting their female fetuses aborted at the clinic. Acting on a clue, the police arrested child specialist Dr Shrikant Marda after raiding his Marda nursing home and X-ray clinic. Dr Marda has been imprisoned in judicial custody and his clinic and machinery have been sealed.

Gade said that during the raid, the police found three pregnant women at the clinic from Solapur, Pune and Satara districts, who were administered local anesthesia. Among them, two women said that they had come to the clinic to abort their female fetuses. The police have arrested the husbands of these two women.

Gade also said that further investigations led to the arrest of a homeopath, Dr Vilas Sawant (51), from Mhaswad in Satara district, and Suraj Babar (37) from Kadegaon in Sangli district. They were arrested from their residences on Sunday. Dr Sawant, who runs Sanchit Hospital in Mhaswad, used to treat patients with allopathic medicines. They have seized pills used in the medical termination of pregnancies from his hospital. Babar, who has a clinic in Kadegaon, has studied only up to the 10th standard and had done a course in naturopathy. The sixth man arrested is Suresh Kumbhar from Karnataka, who use to supply medicines to the doctors.

Gade said that all six have been charged under eight sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including 313 (miscarriage without woman’s consent) and 315 (act done with intent to prevent child from being born alive or to cause it to die after birth), and other sections associated to forgery, theft, destroying evidence and criminal conspiracy. Also, they have been booked under provisions of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act.

Gade did not rule out the possibility of the arrest of the two women who confessed that they had come to the clinic to abort their female fetuses. The police will decide on their arrest after completing the investigations. He said an agent who played a crucial role in the racket has been identified but refused to disclose the agent’s name, as it could hamper investigations.

Police has suspected a network of agents involved in the racket which is active in Satara, Sangli and Solapur districts of western Maharashtra. He said Sawant and Babar would identify women wanting to abort their female fetuses and further used to send them to Dr Marda.

On Monday, Dr Sawant and Babar were produced before the Mangalvedha court and remanded in police custody for four days. Moreover Dr Marda, Kumbhar and the husbands of the two women admitted at the clinic are also in judicial custody.

Source: ET Healthworld