Indian doctor jailed for gender test

DELHI - An Indian doctor was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday for carrying out a gender test on an unborn baby.

Anil Sabsani is the first doctor in India to go to prison under tough laws designed to curb the widespread practice of aborting female foetuses because parents prefer male children.

Dr Sabsani, a radiologist, was jailed after he told an undercover investigator she was carrying a female baby, but that it could be "taken care of".

Abortion is legal in India, but gender testing on unborn foetuses is not.

That is because many Indian parents routinely choose to terminate pregnancies if the child is a girl.

The result is that there are only 927 women for every 1,000 men in India, and the number has been steadily falling for years.

It is believed as many as 10 million female babies have been aborted in India over the last 20 years.

A study by Indian and Canadian researchers published earlier this year found that selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000 female children a year.

Indians choose to abort girls because they are seen as a financial burden.

In traditional sections of Indian society, women's parents still have to provide them with extravagant dowries when they marry.

Male children, by contrast, bring money into the family when they marry, and have better employment prospects.

Before laws against pre-natal sex-determination tests were introduced, clinics used to advertise with the slogan: "Pay 1,000 rupees now for a test, rather than 100,000 rupees later".

The practice has started to have severe social consequences, with a shortage of women of marriageable age and an increasing number of Indian men unable to marry.

Strict laws against sex-determination tests have been in place for 12 years, but until now enforcement has been poor.

More than 4,000 cases have come before courts, but the conviction rate has been very low, and in rare cases where there was a conviction, sentences have been as low as a 930 rupee ($34) fine.

That has been because witnesses have regularly turned hostile when the cases came to court, refusing to testify against doctors amid widespread suspicions they have been bribed or intimidated.

Witnesses in Dr Sabsani's case turned hostile, but the prosecution succeeded because undercover investigators secretly videotaped a consultation in which he told a pregnant woman the sex of her baby for an extra 1550 rupees ($57).

He told her it was a girl, and added: "But that's all right, it can be taken care of".

The authorities in Haryana state said they had sent in an undercover team after receiving complaints about Dr Sabsani.

Haryana has one of the worst female foeticide rates in the country, and there are only 861 women for every 1,000 men in the state.

"In 12 years of the law being in force, this is the first time the government has taken action," said Ranjana Kumari, an Indian activist from the Centre for Social Research.

"Revealing that the foetus is female results in it being aborted.

This is akin to murder and the punishment should have been more severe.

We hope Tuesday's judgment will act as a deterrent for other doctors." The money to be made from providing sex-determination tests has led many to flout the law.

The doctor can tell the sex of the foetus in the course of a routine ultrasound check-up, without conducting extra tests.

Some clinics have resorted to underhand methods to get around the law: doctors sign the report in red ink for a girl and blue for a boy, or hand over the report on Monday for a boy and Friday for a girl.

Dr Sabsani's assistant was also sentenced to two years in jail, and both were fined 5,000 rupees ($185).

- INDEPENDENT