Nearly two weeks after the Supreme Court asked Maharashtra to act against the Malpani Infertility Centre in Mumbai, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started proceedings against the doctors who run the clinic. ‘‘We lodged a criminal complaint in a magistrate’s court on Tuesday,’’ says BMC law officer S.H. Ujjainwala. ‘‘The first hearing is on October 16.’’Doctors Aniruddha and Anjali Malpani continued to advertise a pre-conception sex-selection procedure on their website six months after it was banned in India. Through www.drmalpani.com, they were asking couples to select the sex of their babies by Pre-Implantational Genetic Diagnosis — in other words to have test-tube babies of their choice.Checking the sex of the foetus through tests was banned — except for the purpose of detecting sex-linked genetic abnormalities and disorders — by the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act of 1994. But selecting the sex of the child before conception through methods, such as the one offered by the Malpani couple, had been a gray area. In January 2003, Parliament banned them through an amendment to the PNDT Act.‘‘I have not been practising PGD since February because of the amendment. We simply forgot to update our website,’’ Malpani says. But advertising such techniques is also illegal under Section 22 of the Act. Asked why it took an SC ruling to prompt action against the Malpanis, BMC executive health officer Dr R.M. Kathuria says: ‘‘They were only advertising on the Net. It was not like a hoarding that can be seen easily. Besides, the amendments came recently and the officers are only now being given training on PNDT.’’‘‘Our officer has 50 other responsibilities. He can’t spend 24 hours on PNDT,’’ he adds. Manmohan Singh, the principal secretary (family welfare), on other hand said he has ‘‘written to the officer concerned pointing out that action should have been taken earlier’’.
