BENGALURU: The CID probing the sex determination and female foeticide case has arrested another nurse from Mysuru. With this, the number of arrests has increased to 11.
The arrested nurse is a relative of one the agents who has already been booked in the case. The nurse, identified as Usharani, was arrested from Mysuru. She is the second nurse arrested in the last three days.
Usharani is the head nurse at a private hospital in Mysuru. She is a relative of a broker and another accused Puttaraju. A total of 11 accused, including two doctors, have been arrested so far in Bengaluru, Mandya and Mysuru.
Puttaraju would reportedly identify pregnant women who wanted to know the sex of the foetus, and would take them to Mandya for sex determination. If the foeteus was determined as female, the women were sent to hospitals in Mysuru.
At one such hospital, Usharani was allegedly involved terminating pregnancies at Puttaraju’s behest. Accordingly, Usharani is alleged to have performed many abortions, without the hospital’s knowledge, by creating fake documents.
The CID has served a notice to the hospital’s owner to appear for questioning, along with patient registers. It is also reported that Usharani worked at a hospital owned by one of the two doctors arrested in the case. After quitting this job, she started working at another hospital. It may be recalled that in the last three months, the accused have performed 242 illegal abortions.
Of the 11 arrested, two are doctors, two nurses, three lab technicians/compounders, two agents, one
manager and a hospital receptionist, all hailing from either Mysuru or Mandya. Meanwhile, the two doctors own hospitals at Udayagiri in Mysuru. Of them, one is a pediatrician and the other is an ayurvedic doctor. For every abortion, they charged between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000, while each sex determination test would cost Rs 5,000.