On Tuesday, Rani led police to a well that she alleged, was used by her employers, Dr. Pritam Singh and his wife Amarjit Kaur, to dispose of scores of unborn girls aborted at their hospital in the Patran town of Punjab's state's Patiala district.

A police raid on the hospital, supported by Patiala district's civil surgeon, Dr. H.S. Mohi, resulted in the recovery of the remains of several female foetuses and other evidence sufficient for the arrest of Singh and his wife.

Rani, who has been working at the hospital for over two months, told newspersons that she was appalled by what was going on there. ‘'In the time I have been working there I personally know of at least a dozen selective abortions that have taken place.''

India legislated, as long ago as 1994, to ban the misuse of ultrasound and other medical diagnostic techniques to determine the sex of unborn children and then terminate pregnancies, if the foetus was found to be female. But gender determination is big business in India where family and social pressures to produce male children are immense. That situation combined with the ready availability of medical techniques and doctors willing to perform abortions for a fat fee made a mockery of the law.

The consequences of unchecked ‘female foeticide' became shockingly apparent in the 2001 national census when the sex ratio in Punjab was found to have dropped down to 874 females for every 1,000 males. In adjacent Haryana (which shares the provincial capital of Chandigarh with Punjab), the ratio was even worse -- 861 females per thousand males.

Apathy against a process that was altering the demography of northern India began to change only after the prestigious British medical journal ‘Lancet' estimated in January that selective abortions may have claimed the lives of as many as five million girls in India since the 1994 legislation. Researchers for Lancet estimated that perhaps ten million girls have gone missing over the last 20 years as result of medical technology coming to the aid of social prejudices.

While Lancet's data was disputed by the powerful Indian Medical Association (IMA), which assiduously fights to protect its well-heeled and highly qualified constituents, the findings seem to have finally prodded reluctant officials and politicians into action.

On Mar. 28, a court in Haryana state handed down the first convictions for carrying out selective abortions, that of a doctor and his assistant. Dr. Anil Sabhani and his technician received two-year jail terms mostly on the strength evidence gathered through a sting operation which caught them on film illegally identifying the sex of a foetus and promising to abort it for a fee.

‘'The Haryana court verdict was a trend-setter and people involved in this social crime stopped taking things for granted,'' Dr. Balbir Singh Dahiya, a former state health director who led the sting operation, told IPS in an interview. Dahiya said getting that all important first conviction was tough. ''We had to use the services of four pregnant women before we could gather enough evidence to present to the Haryana State Appropriate Authority which nailed Sabhani.''

The authority was specifically created by the state government to enforce the provisions of the 1994 law, officially called the Pre-conception pre-natal diagnostic techniques (regulation and prevention of misuse) Act or PCPNDT Act, for short.

But the fact that it took twelve years to secure a conviction was an indicator of the hurdles in getting society to see ‘female foeticide' as unacceptable. Because hard evidence is difficult to obtain, Tuesday's recovery of the remains of aborted foetuses in Patiala is being seen as a major breakthrough.

The PCPNDT act allows pre-natal diagnostic techniques, including ultrasonography, to detect genetic abnormalities or other sex-linked disorders in a foetus. But the act says that no genetic counselling centre, laboratory or clinic may employ pre-natal diagnostic techniques, to determine the sex of the foetus. Violations are punishable with prison terms that may extend to five years and a fine.

Medical termination of pregnancy has for decades been legal in India, a country anxious restrict the growth of its population that now stands at 1.1 billion and is next only to China's in size.

Acting on public interest litigation filed by health activists concerned at non-enforcement of the act the Supreme Court, in 2003, directed the central and provincial governments to strictly implement the PCPNDT act through ‘appropriate authorities'. These bodies, including the state director of health services, a member of a women's organisation and an official of the law department, were charged with ensuring implementation.

When even these were found to be non-functional, the central health ministry set up, in October 2005, a National Inspection and Monitoring Committee (NIMC) to improve enforcement. ‘'Our observation was that the authorities were not taking their job seriously,'' Malini Bhattacharya, member of the NIMC, told IPS.

Much of the inaction was explained to be the result of deeply ingrained social prejudices against the girl child. ‘' This is a society which feels insecure without sons. And modern technology is now helping people to have sons rather than daughters,'' said Gouri Chowdhury, director of Action India, a Delhi-based non-government organization. ‘'We have been running an awareness campaign in favour of the girl child since 1980 but technology has been spreading faster than awareness.''

The conviction of Sabhani in Haryana and Tuesday's arrests in Patiala have stirred serious debate within the medical fraternity. The secretary general of the IMA, Vinay Aggarwal, said it is not enough to arrest doctors. "This is a social problem that cannot be controlled by taking action against doctors found guilty of violating the PCPNDT act. Governments should give priorities to girls in its policies. Judgement such as in Dr. Sabhani's case will only make the medical community defensive."

But Dahiya differs with this view. "The community of medical practitioners cannot evade responsibility for this social evil. Those who talk of changing mindsets are only trying to save their own skins. I am in favour of cancelling the licence of doctors found guilty of violating the PCPNDT act. Mere imprisonments and fines will not save society from being deprived of females.''

Last month, Punjab's health minister, R.C. Dogra, said the state would soon put into place a combined strategy of creating awareness, stringent punishments and handsome incentives for parents of girl children, to pro-actively combat the ‘‘evil trend'' of aborting female foetuses. (FIN/2006)