Twelve years after the law was enacted to check female foeticide and 4000 cases later, the first conviction with a prison terms took place today under the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act.

A doctor and his assistant were sentenced to two years in prison and a Rs 5000-fine in Palwal, Haryana. Punjab has seen one conviction to date — Dr Neelam Kohli of Ropar district was fined Rs 1,000 by the Kharar court in July, 2003.

This case followed the typical route: it was filed in 2001 when Dr Anil Sabsani was caught red-handed by members of the Appropriate Authority set up under the Act in every state. The four-member authority had a decoy customer and made audio and video recordings of the doctor’s interaction with the customer in which he identified the sex of the foetus as female and assured the patient that “it would be taken care of.”

As is the trend, all private witnesses turned hostile but the recordings made the difference as the case was heard by a lower court in Palwal.

‘‘When we first received complaints on the phone against the doctor, we sat and strategisied. We made a detailed plan,’’ said R C Agarwal, civil surgeon based in Faridabad and head of Haryana’s Appropriate Authority.

He has four others complaints pending in local courts. ‘‘The most important thing is to get an early judgment. When it takes five years for a case to be decided, we get completely demoralised,’’ said Agarwal.

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