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Around mid-September, a video on Facebook caught the attention of Bagalkot District Health Officer (DHO) Suvarna Kulkarni. It showed a person in a car outside the house of a woman and another person allegedly carrying equipment and pills used for abortions. The video caught the attention of Suvarna and other health officials as the woman in the video, Kavita Badanavar, was known to them.
Kavita Badanavar had been booked twice before in cases regarding illegal medical practice. In one case, she is accused of medically terminating the pregnancy of a woman in Mahalingpur in 2024 despite not being a registered medical practitioner. The woman, a native of Kolhapur, Maharashtra, died.
When the video of Kavita surfaced on social media, the district health department decided to look into it. Kannada television media carried visuals from this video.
The Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994, (PCPNDT Act) prohibits the sex determination and disclosure of the sex of a fetus, as well as the use of pre-natal diagnostic techniques for sex selection.
“A person who works with Kavita Badanavar was carrying some equipment used for abortions and pills. The entire thing was captured in the video, and it was circulating in the local media” said AC Shweta.
“The only thing we had in our hands was the video,” Dr Suvarna Kulkarni, Bagalkot DHO, told TNM. Officials were unable to zero in on the building visible in the video, nor the equipment.
With little else to go on, officials questioned Kavita Badanavar on Monday, October 5, in Mahalingpur. She revealed that pregnant women from Karnataka were being taken to a village in Maharashtra for illegal pre-natal sex determination scans, and that she had taken some of them herself.
Three district officials, Shweta Bideekar, the Jamkhandi Assistant Commissioner (AC), Sobha TR Deputy Director (Medical Act) in the state Health Department, and Dr Kulkarni then travelled with Kavita Badanavar to Jadar Babaladi, a village in Maharashtra’s Jath Taluk, in Sangli district, about 120 km from Bagalkot. AC Shweta posed as a pregnant woman while Dr Kulkarni and Deputy Director Sobha played the roles of her mother and sister-in-law respectively. Their goal was to confirm whether the scans were really being offered.
The team contacted a man named Nikhil Teli, who told them that the scans were conducted at a farmhouse. Nikhil’s mother, Danakka Teli, allegedly demanded payment for the scan and told them that the machine was kept at the house of a woman named Kavita Godekar in Karjagi village.
The officials then went to the house, where preparations were underway to conduct a scan using a portable ultrasound machine. They seized the machine and related equipment.
An FIR has since been registered at Umadi police station in Maharashtra against four people: Sanjay Waghmore, Kavita Godekar, Nikhil Teli, and Danakka Teli. The alleged key operator of the network, Sanjay Waghmore alias Patil, fled before he could be caught. Bagalkot health officials said that Kavita Badanavar is not among the four named but they have convinced her to become an approver.
"We talked to her and convinced her to become an approver. Because she had been active in that nexus, we thought she would be the right person to give us more information," Dr Suvarna Kulkarni said
Surveillance
Dr Kulkarni told TNM that Kavita Badanavar was first booked in 2022 under the Karnataka Private Medical Establishments Act, because she was doing medical work at a hospital with no formal qualifications.
In 2024, she was booked again after a woman from Kolhapur died following an abortion in Mahalingpur. The Hindu reported that the abortion was carried out after the sex of the foetus had been determined, and that the woman died on the way back to Maharashtra.
The woman, identified as Sonali Kadam, was four months pregnant and already had two daughters, according to the Karnataka High Court record of the case. The prosecution alleged that her family had brought her to Kavita Badanavar’s house after learning that she was carrying a girl, and that Kavita Badanavar, despite having no medical qualification, carried out the abortion.
Sonali developed complications and died while she was being taken towards Maharashtra. The High Court record says Kavita Badanavar was arrested on May 29, 2024, and later granted bail in May 2025.
According to Dr Kulkarni, the Maharashtra Police first investigated the death and traced it back to Karnataka. A zero FIR was filed and the case was transferred.
Dr Kulkarni said Kavita Badanavar had been under “consistent surveillance” after her earlier alleged offenses. Her house had been sealed by the police, and the Health Department and police were supposed to monitor her jointly. “We were doing our part,” she said.
As of now, it is unclear as to how much of the alleged network has actually been uncovered. According to Assistant Commissioner Beedikar, officials do not yet know how many people from Karnataka may be involved.
Illegal sex detection
The Karnataka State Police’s Crime in Karnataka 2025 report records zero cases under the Act between 2023 and 2025.
However, media reports have documented several investigations into suspected sex determination activities in the state during this period. In November 2023, Bengaluru police busted a racket operating a sex determination centre in a sugarcane field in Mandya, with links to doctors in Chennai, Mysuru, and Bengaluru. TNM reported, quoting police sources, that the network had been operating for three years and charged around Rs 20,000 for each scan. If a fetus was found to be female, the women were allegedly then connected to hospitals and doctors who would perform abortions.
Meanwhile, in October 2025, The Hindu reported that officials from the Karnataka appropriate authority under the PCPNDT Act conducted a decoy operation at a bungalow in Hunuganahalli Hundi, in Bannur taluk of Mysuru district, targeting an alleged sex determination and abortion racket. Seven people, including a nurse, were booked, and police confirmed that four people had been arrested.
This year too, the media reported similar instances. Suspected illegal fetal sex determination was reported by The Hindu in Mandya by this time at two private prenatal diagnostic centres in KR Pet town. Following a case registered by Lokayukta police, Mandya Deputy Commissioner Kumar ordered the formation of a committee to inspect all prenatal diagnostic centres in the district and directed officials to take action against those violating the PCPNDT Act.
Child sex ratio
According to Civil Registration System data reported by The Hindu in December 2023, Karnataka’s recorded sex ratio at birth fell from 947 girls for every 1000 boys in 2021 to 929 in 2022. Bagalkot recorded the second-lowest sex ratio at 897 in 2019 while Mandya recorded the lowest sex ratio in 2020 at 884.
This article was written by a student interning with TNM.
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