‘Illegal’ egg donation: Chargesheet filed against director, doctors of Bandra fertility clinic

The chargesheet names 31 witnesses, including seven medical officers who conducted post-mortem and forensic tests on Pandey.

In 2014, the Bombay High Court had pulled up Saki Naka police for incomplete investigation into Pandey’s death. Later, the police carried out further investigations under an assistant police commissioner.

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According to the copy of the chargesheet in possession with The Indian Express, the centre did not verify physical fitness and mental fitness certificate of the minor girl before surgically extracting her ova. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines, a woman going in for egg donation must undergo medical evaluation, including complete history and physical examination, to ensure there are no health complications after donation. Additionally, no steps were taken to ensure that the identity proof submitted by Pandey was authentic. An Income Tax department report to the Sakinaka Police on January 4, 2014, confirmed that the pan-card submitted by her as an identity proof under the name ‘Sushma Dubey’ was not even registered, according to the chargesheet.

On August 10, 2010, Pandey had succumbed to abdominal pain and was declared dead on arrival at civic-run Rajawadi hospital, two days after she donated her eggs at the centre for the third time. In the past, she had donated her ova twice, on October 22, 2009, and February 15, 2010. According to a report submitted by JJ hospital, a rise in hormonal level ‘led to shock’, causing her death.

In her complaint, Pandey’s mother Pramila Pandey has said that she did not know that her minor daughter was an illegal egg donor. “She has never brought home any money. She was fooled into becoming a donor. Before she died, I had taken her to three different doctors to save her life. They just kept giving her injections,” Pramila alleged.

The chargesheet observed that Pandey had a few injection marks on her body and a few other “ordinary wounds”. On August 7, 2010, she told her mother that she was heading to work at the nearby workshop, but instead went to Rotunda between 8.30 am and 7.30 pm to donate her ova.

The Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Regulations) Bill and Rules (2009) state that a fertility clinic should verify the age before registering a donor. ICMR has fixed the age between 18 and 35 years for a person donating eggs, but Pandey was only 17.

tabassum.barnagarwala@expressindia.com