Dr Shah is the fourth in the line with DN Prajapati in Palanpur, Harshad Thakkar in Ahmedabad and Bharat Bhope in Rajkot having been booked earlier under the Act.

An FIR was lodged on Wednesday and the two mediators in the case, Vijay Goswami and Paresh Shah, were arrested by the police on Thursday. Maninagar Police Inspector, PJ Trivedi, said, “We have arrested the duo on Thursday night. The doctor is presently absconding and could not be arrested as he got a day’s time as the FIR was lodged a day after the sting operation.”

Meanwhile, even as the government tasted some success by securing a Supreme Court stay in the case of Dr Harshad Thakkar against his application to allow him to sell off his sonography machine; in all the three previous cases though their machines have been sealed, the doctors have not been restricted from practising in the absence of any regulation.

“While the case is in the Supreme Court, the doctor’s PNDT registration has been suspended but the doctor continues to practise as his Medical Council of India (MCI) registration has neither been cancelled nor suspended,” said CDHO, Ahmedabad district.

Ahmedabad district has as many as 50 cases against pathology labs for conducting illegal sex determination tests with the same number of machines sealed by the health department. It could not be confirmed whether in the rest of the cases, the PNDT registration has been cancelled or suspended.

Dr M Ranawat, the implementing officer for the PNDT Act, said, “All the four doctors will be convicted sooner or later and their MCI registration will be automatically cancelled along with the verdict. However, until the court gives its verdict, we cannot restrict these doctors from practising. Until then their sonography machines have been sealed.”

He said, “In the earlier two cases, which were on the basis of deficiency of records, the accused were arrested for a day and fined Rs 1,000. But, most cases went against us in the court. We therefore had to resort to sting operations to establish terror in the minds of the offenders.”

“Although, each sting operation takes a lot of time and requires involvement of at least 50 people at various levels, the chances of the plan leak is high. But it still works as the offenders are qualified doctors who are definitely afraid of going to jails,” said Ranawat.