Clinics for pre-natal sex determination tests flourishing in

A Delhi court has said clinics for providing pre-natal diagnosis and sex determination tests are flourishing in Delhi in connivance with the local administration, politicians and police.
"Clinics providing for pre-natal diagnosis and sex determination flourish in connivance of local administration, police and other concerned authority only because those who are entrusted with the duty of taking action choose to look the other way. This is a harsh social and national reality and the court of law cannot shut its eyes to the same", Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said.
Her observations came as she dismissed the plea of a doctor couple seeking discharge from the accusation of running a pre-natal sex determination and pregnancy termination clinic in Ashok Vihar area.

The couple sought discharge on legal and technical ground including that the prosecution has not been initiated as per the provisions of the PC and PNDT Act.
"This court will not adopt an interpretation of law which defeats the object which this Special Act {Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act} seeks to attain," the court said.
It added there were thousands of clinics where such illegal activities of sex determination and abortions were carried out on a daily basis and in some cases it was being run in connivance with politicians.
The court, in its order, also gave figures of sex ratio in the country saying as per the statistics, nearly 10 million female foetuses have been aborted over the past two decades and out of the 12 million girls born in India, one million do not see their first birthdays.

"As a result of this, human trafficking has become common in various states of India where teenaged girls are being sold for cheap money by poor families, being treated as sex objects with more than half of such cases go unreported," it said.