‘Tip-off to officials of dist cells gets leaked’

JAIPUR: People who tip off officials of PC-PNDT cell about clinics involved in sex determination tests say they do not trust district cell officials as the bodies have district chief medical and health officers as secretaries.

The cells were formed to monitor and check violation of the PC-PNDT (prohibition of sex selection) Act, 1994.

Rights activists, who carry out “decoy” operations at diagnostic centres suspected to be conducting sex determination tests, say that intelligence provided by them to the district level cells are leaked to the people who get the tests done and the exercise becomes futile. They say they have more faith on the state cell than the district units.

Information given to the state cell about doctors, who conduct sex determination tests, is not leaked and action is taken against the guilty, some say.

Earlier the PC-PNDT cells at the district level were headed by collectors as the chairman, the sub divisional magistrates as its secretaries along with a government paediatrician, a gynaecologist, a public relations officer, a private paediatrician or two social works, including a woman as members.

In April 2015, the sub divisional magistrates were replaced by the chief medical and health officers (CMHO) as secretaries.

Following the change, informers say with CMHOs as secretaries, guilty doctors were not penalised.

Out of the total 46 decoy operations carried out in the state since December 2009, only 11 were at the district-level cells,.

“When the SDM was secretary of the PC-PNDT cell at the district level, there was fear among doctors to conduct sex determination tests, but we have observed that now they have become bolder after the CHMO replaced the SDM. We have been informing state level PC-PNDT cell about it,” an activist, who does not wish to be named, says.

State PC-PNDT authority Naveen Jain says that after increasing money for informers more cases of sex determination tests are being reported.