The ultrasound machine seized from the clinic was not registered with any local health authorities (Representative Image) | Photo Credit: BCCL

Key Highlights Sivasankaran has been operating Chennai Scan Centre since 2014 Residents of Velachery and local doctors tipped-off Chennai police A raid was conducted and the quack was arrested on Monday

Chennai: A quack was arrested and his clinic sealed in Chennai's Velachery area on Monday. City police seized the equipment recovered from the Chennai Scan Centre, including an ultrasound machine that was being used without any valid permits. In what has come out as a shocking admission, police admit that the quack was able to reveal the sex of the foetuses to at least 500 women just in the last year.

Identified as K Sivasankaran, the quack had been running his clinic at that very same spot since 2014. A science graduate with a degree in Zoology, the accused was arrested and booked earlier this week. Chennai police raided his clinic on the basis of tip-offs from local doctors and residents of the area who pointed out the illegal nature of activities underway at the Chennai Scan Centre.

In order to catch the quack in the act, a woman who was five months pregnant at the time was asked to visit the clinic posing as a patient. She approached the accused who happily obliged. After conducting a sex-determination test, he told the woman that the child in her womb was a baby boy and charged her ₹1,200 for this information. Evidence gathered during this operation was then cited to arrest Sivasankaran for violating the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 which prohibits determination of the sex of a child.

An official with the Chennai Police also told Times of India that the decoy patient's interaction with the quack has been recorded on video and the same will be produced before a court at the right time. As many as 500 reports of sex determination tests were recovered from the clinic but the police believe that there may have been many more since inputs suggest that there were close to 10 women examined at the clinic each day since its inception in 2014.