AURANGABAD: The Beed sessions court on Friday convicted the husband of a sugarcane labourer who died during an operation to abort her female foetus in 2012. Judge A S Gadhi sentenced the accused, Mahadeo Patekar, to 10 years in prison and also pronounced the same jail term for the doctor couple from Parli, Sudam Munde and his wife Saraswati, for the death of Vijayamala Patekar.The court also slapped a fine of Rs 4.5 lakh on the couple. The amount will be put as fixed deposits in the names of Vijayamala’s four daughters.Prosecution lawyer Milind Waghirkar said, “The Mundes and Mahadeo have been sentenced to 10 years’ RI under sections 312 (voluntarily causing a woman with child to miscarry), 314 (death caused by act done with intent to cause miscarriage), 315 (act done with intent to prevent child being born alive or to cause it to die after birth) and 318 (concealment of birth by secret disposal of dead body) of the Indian Penal Code and various provisions of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act.”Waghirkar said Vijayamala’s relatives had turned hostile during the trial. “Witnesses of the police, medical officers and documents seized from the hospital proved vital in nailing the Mundes,” he added.The police said when Vijayamala, a resident of Bhopa in Dharur taluka of Beed district, became pregnant, her relatives got a sex determination test done illegally in Jalgaon, which confirmed she was carrying a female foetus. The doctor who conducted the test was subsequently arrested. On May 18, 2012, Mahadeo took his wife to the four-storey Munde hospital in Parli for the illegal abortion. The operation took place between 7.30pm and 9pm, during which Vijayamala bled excessively and later died.The police raided the hospital after they received information of Vijayamala’s death and sent her body for a post-mortem examination. When her relatives did not turn up at the police station to file a complaint, inspector Ramrao Patil Gadekar of Parli police station lodged a complaint against the Mundes and Mahadeo.The Mundes have already been convicted and sentenced to four years’ RI in a case of illegal sex determination in June 2016. They were convicted under eight different sections of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act in that case.

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