Rajasthan helps UP lodge its first PCPNDT FIR
Rajasthan helped Uttar Pradesh lodge its first FIR for sex determination. Rajasthan’s PCPNDT cell had got a tip-off that some hospitals and clinics in Uttar Pradesh’s Buldandshahr were conducting sex determination tests. A decoy operation was carried out to arrest the culprits.
Rajasthan’s PCPNDT cell coordinated with Bulandshahr district magistrate, who is appropriate authority under the PCPNDT Act, to form teams to conduct decoy operations at two hospitals. In the joint operation (by Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) three doctors and four agents were arrested.
The operations were conducted at Shobharam Hospital and Solanki Hospital. The teams arrested Dr Brajpal Singh (50) and two agents – Jitendra (48) and Sanjeev (35) – from Shobharam Hospital and Dr Gajraj (65), Dr Dushyant (29) and middlemen Danish (22) and Brahmjeet (20) from Solanki Hospital.
“We got information that some centres in Bulandshahr conduct sex determination scans. We verified the information to conduct decoy operations,” said Rajasthan’s PCPNDT project director Raghuveer Singh.
“The Rajasthan team contacted us and we planned joint operations as they are experts in it,” Jasjit Kaur, chief development officer, Bulandshahr told HT over the phone. The district administration arranged the decoy, a pregnant woman.
Rajasthan is a pioneer in conducting decoy operations to nab those involved in sex determination, which often leads to female foeticide. In May, a team from Uttar Pradesh, lead by woman and child department special secretary Ram Kewal, came to Jaipur to study “innovative and good practices” of Rajasthan PCPNDT cell. Rajasthan’s PCPNDT cell, Singh added, has conducted 75 operations so far, 17 outside Rajasthan. The cell gets tip-offs from neighbouring states such as Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, and conduct operations there. The cell has conducted eight decoy operations in UP but the Bulandshahr operation is the first in which the local authorities were involved, Singh said.
“After we instilled fear in ultrasound centres in Rajasthan by booking people under Section 315 of the IPC (to prevent a child from being born/or born alive concealing the birth of a child), we began to target centres in bordering districts outside Rajasthan where pregnant women from here go for tests. In the third phase, we are training other states in conducting such operations for strict implementation of the PCPNDT Act. The Bulandshahr operation was the result of one such training,” said Naveen Jain, state appropriate authority of PCPNDT in Rajasthan and mission director of National Health Mission in the state.