3 MP doctors convicted for sex-determination, female foeticide

A court here sentenced three doctors to three years in jail in a 2009 sex-determination and female foeticide case.

Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Prachi Patel on Monday convicted Sushma Trivedi, Sandhya Tiwari and SK Shrivastava under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, public prosecutor Ritesh Goyal said.

The doctors were given three years imprisonment and the court slapped a fine of Rs 5,000 on two of them -- Sandhya Tiwari and SK Shrivastava -- for running clinics without legal permission, he said.

Goyal said a Delhi-based social organisation called 'Beti Bachao Samiti' had conducted a sting operation separately on these three doctors in May 2009.

In the sting operation, these doctors agreed to carry out sex-determination and female foeticide procedures in their clinics, Goyal said.

The Delhi-based organisation approached the district collector with the recording of the sting operation, who directed the chief medical and health officer (CMHO) to file a case against the three doctors under the PCPNDT Act, he informed.

The court found them guilty under section 23 of the PCPNDT Act, which prohibits sex selection and use of pre-natal diagnostic techniques, Goyal said, adding that the doctors pleaded for leniency claiming that they had committed the offence for the first time.

The prosecution, however, contended that only imposing fine would send a wrong signal to society.