Two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs Sanjeev Raja and Anil Parashar allegedly prevented the arrest of a doctor couple caught in a sex determination racket busted by a team of health officials in Aligarh.
The Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) cell of the Rajasthan government caught Dr Jayant Sharma and his wife conducting the illegal pre-natal sex-determination tests in their Jeevan Nursing Home in the city on Tuesday night.
According to The Indian Express, the MLAs allegedly did not allow officials to seize the ultrasound machine or pick up the accused doctors. They even reached the police station with other officials and left the place at 2 am only when the doctor was let go.
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“We apprised senior officers in the government regarding the local public representatives interfering in the legal matter. We tried to convince the MLAs to allow the legal procedure but they refused to listen,” Rishikesh Yashod, district magistrate of Aligarh, told the newspaper.
Parashar, a BJP MLA from Kol constituency, said that "they should have first probed if the test was conducted. How could they arrest the doctor?”
Defending doctors, Raja said he won’t allow such thing to happen and only the court will decide the action.
Sex selection/determination is prohibited in India. A central legislation namely the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 (PC & PNDT Act, 1994) for prohibition of sex selection/determination before or after conception, and for regulation of pre-natal diagnostic techniques is already in force throughout India.
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In Uttar Pradesh, the child sex ratio is 902 girls per thousand males, which is worse than national ratio of 919.
Some of the reasons for neglect of girl child and low child sex ratio are preference for male child and the belief that it is only the son who can perform the last rites, that lineage and inheritance runs through the male line, sons will look after parents in old age, men are the bread winners etc.
