Tiny bones of advance foetuses found in the second well

Patiala, Aug 11 (UNI) Tiny bones have been recovered during the digging of a second dry well ''sealed'' by the quack couple owners of the local nursing home exposed on August nine for illegal abortions in Patran town of this district.

''Tiny bones found in the well dug about 35 feet so far, indicate the aborted foetuses could be of such advance stage as of six months. The digging is continuing. We plan to dig as deep as 50 feet,'' Patiala Civil Surgeon V S Mohi said today.

''The stench emanating from the well is an indication of what use it had been put to,'' said Dr Mohi, whose digging team has its face well wrapped.

''We presume most of the foetuses were of female gender but we can not say for sure now. The findings will be tested at Rajindra Medical College here,'' he said.

''It seems like an organised racket. Many more people could have been involved. The abortions took place during nights and the area of operation involved adjoining districts of Haryana as well,'' Dr Mohi said.

The second well is in close vicinity of the first one found on August nine near the Sahib nursing home run by quack couple, Pritam Singh and Amarjit Kaur who are in police remand.

Investigations revealed that the sex of foetuses were not divulged in the nursing home and most of the pregnant women came after getting ultra-sound reports from outside diagnostic centres, showing that a number of diagnostic centres were also involved in the racket.

There are believed to be around 20 such pre-natal sex determination centres which took between Rs 8000 to 10,000 per case.

A team of Haryana and Punjab police will shortly be launching a joint operation against such illegally-run centres, sources said.

The Punjab Medical authorities, on the auspicious occasion of Raksha Bandhan, had stumbled upon the well, which was being used by the owners of Sahib nursing home to dump suspected female foetuses after abortion.

Though the authorities could not recover any foetus from the well, some placenta were found, which were sent RMC for analyses. It was decided to dig the second well, in the vicinity, which was covered on suspicious that it could have also been used to dispose of aborted foetuses.

The couple were not qualified doctors and possessed forged degrees which were recovered when Dr Mohi's team raided the nursing home. The same nursing home had been raided about an year back but nothing indisriminate could be found then, he added.

On Wednesday, with help from the police when the medical team searched the well located outside the nursing home some placenta were pulled out.

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