The Hyderabad police on Tuesday informed the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High Court that quacks were conducting abortions and surgeries at Gayatri Nursing Home, situated in Saidabad in the city.
The Assistant Commissioner of Sultan Bazar division filed an action taken report on the court's orders.
In April this year, hearing a petition by one Sandeep Yadav, represented by his counsel SR Sanku, it was brought to the court's notice that the nursing home was promoting female foeticide. The petitioner also submitted video evidences to support his claim.
The videos were seen by a division bench comprising the Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K Vijaya Lakshmi, following which the court directed the authorities to ensure that the place was shut down until further orders.
One gruesome video shared with the court showed a quack, crushing a feotus with her bare hands after pulling it out of a woman's vagina.
The police said that the victim in this video hailed from Nalgonda district and added that they had arrested her husband and in-laws for forcing her to terminate her pregnancy.
Sandeep had earlier alleged that many of the patients who visited the nursing home belonged to the ST community and generally wanted a baby boy. The doctor at the nursing home would then urge couples to do a sex determination test and a scan at a lab in the city’s Santosh Nagar area, before suggesting that they go ahead with an abortion.
The petitioner’s counsel argued that the nursing home’s activities were illegal under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994.
Based on the court’s order, the police had earlier booked a case under the Medical sub-section 5 of the Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, including under sub-section (2) (Termination of pregnancy by a person who is not a registered medical practitioner).
The police also arrested three accused who were running the nursing home, and sent them to judicial remand.
After the counsel of the nursing home sought time to file a response to the action taken report, the case was postponed to three weeks.
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