The Byappanahalli police arrested a head nurse of a private hospital owned by the prime accused of the sex determination racket, who allegedly confessed to have aborted hundreds of babies.
The accused Manjula, who escaped soon after the racket was busted, joined another hospital in Mysuru from where she was arrested on Friday, December 1. She is among the ten people arrested so far.
Revealing the horrific details of the racket, Manjula confessed that she was working in the hospital as head nurse for the last one year with the main job of aborting babies. She told the officials that pregnant women who were admitted to the hospital were given tablets which made them bleed to remove the foetus.
She said that starting from 14 weeks foetus, she had aborted foetuses that were up to six months old. She would keep the removed foetus out for a few minutes to die and wrap it in a piece of paper to hand it over to Nisar, the hospital attendant, to dispose of. Nisar would take the package to throw it in the Cauvery River to leave no trace, she told the police. Some other foetuses she would dump in the medical waste bin and leave for a few days to decompose.
Sometimes it was difficult to determine the sex of the foetus and she would ask the patients to come next time so that it could develop, the police said.
She also alleged that Chandan Ballal, the accused doctor, at times could not scan properly. “I don’t think he had completed his MBBS course and was not qualified to open a nursing home,“ she reportedly told the police.
The police are now preparing all the documents to be handed over to the CID for further investigation.
