Pune: Police in Pune have arrested two men after their wives were seen undergoing prenatal tests to determine the sex of their fetuses inside a car.

A regular police patrol at a road in Indapur on July 28 found Sunita Vilas Dange and Balika Popat Chavan undergoing sex determination tests inside a car. The cops also caught red handed two men who conducted the tests on the women. It was found later that the two Hanumant More and Tushar Gade did not possess any medical degree.

The husbands have been booked under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, for carrying out sex determination tests.

The act was enacted to stop female feticides and arrest the declining sex ratio in India. The act banned prenatal sex determination.

This is the first time husbands are booked under the law. Until now only doctors have been booked for conducting the illegal tests.

The police officials said they became suspicious on seeing the car parked at the roadside for more than two hours. On questioning the people inside confessed to the crime.

“One woman confessed to having three, and the other, five daughters. They were forced by their husbands to undergo sonography, so that they do not give birth to a girl child again,” Pune district civil surgeon Dr Sanjay Deshmukh told Pune Mirror.

Eknath Chandanshive, medical superintendent of Indapur sub-district Hospital, said they have not filed a police complaint against the “doctors.” He said they will write to the Maharashtra Medical Council about the alternate therapy practitioners, who posed as sonologists to cheat people.

Chandanshive said the Pune PCPDNT officials would file a case in court against the husbands. “This will be the first the first time that along with the doctors, husbands will also be booked under the Act as they were the ones who forced their wives to undergo the tests.”

The “doctors” said they had bought a machine of Chinese make from an exhibition in Delhi for 150,000 rupees and have been performing sex determination tests for the past one year or so. They charged between 8,000 and 10,000 rupees for a test.

Megha Sontale, legal advisory of the Pune division’s PCPDNT department, says they could be many such machines being imported. “We checked with these doctors. Their machine was not registered and they also lacked any centre back home.”