Syed Rizwanullah, TNN Jun 20, 2013,
AURANGABAD: Around 16 people, including five doctors, involved in cases of sex selection in Maharashtra’s Beed district in 2012 will now be tried for murder instead of culpable homicide.
The accused include five medical practitioners, hospital staffers, the women who gave birth to the female fetuses and their male relatives.
The Beed court framed the charges in the case on Tuesday. In all, 17 people had been booked.
On June 2, 2012, two female foetuses were found abandoned on the Bindusara river bank on the outskirts of Beed city. Another foetus was recovered from a village in Beed district, where the relatives had allegedly buried it. All the foetues had been aborted at Beed’s Sanap Hospital.
Shivaji Sanap, the medical practitioner who was arrested on June 2, 2012, for illegally aborting the fetues, is still in judicial custody. The others have been granted bail, the government pleader said. The hospital premises is owned by Sanap’s father-in-law Shrihari Lahane, a senior medical practitioner, who is among the 16 people charged.
The medical practitioners involved in the case expressed shock over the court’s move. “It has shocked us but we cannot make any comment on the court’s move as it is a part of the judicial process,” they said.
“We will consult legal experts and our lawyers to explore the possibility of challenging the order. We are waiting for a full text of the court’s move,” the added.
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Forum against Sex Selection (FASS) 