Ellisbridge Police on Sunday arrested 10 male members of a city-based industrialist family for forcing their daughter-in-law Pooja Salat to abort her four-month-old female foetus. The Salat family stays at Isan Apartments near Old Sharda Mandir in Paladi.

The other nine accused in the case, eight female family members and city-based gynaecologist Dr Sanat Joshi — accused of aborting the foetus at his clinic — are at large, police said.

The arrests followed after 31-year-old Pooja accused her husband Chirag (35) and 17 others of mental and physical torture for the past nine years as she had failed to give them a male child. Pooja had also accused the Salats of demanding a dowry of Rs 25 lakh.

Mother of twins, nine-year-old Dhwani and Dhruvi, Pooja said that her in-laws had forced her to go for an abortion in 1998 after a sex determination test conducted by Joshi at his clinic in Paladi, revealed that it was a female foetus. Joshi had also been accused of aborting the foetus without Pooja’s consent.

According to case details, daughter of a retired Gandhinagar Sachivalay officer, Pooja married Chirag on May 10, 1996. After a year, Dhwani and Dhruvi were born.

The torture began after the abortion, as it was found that Pooja would not be able to conceive again. Though her in-laws accused Pooja of being infertile, Ellisbrigde Police Sub Inspector, RG Goswami said that Chirag had been visiting a sexologist for several years now. “The Salats also demanded a dowry, which Pooja’s father was unable to pay,” Goswami added.

... contd.