Yahoo – AFP,
Sanjay Kanojia, 14 Nov 2014
Indian
police said Friday they have arrested the head of a drug manufacturing company
and his son on suspicion of destroying evidence in the case of 13 women who
died after a mass sterilisation programme.
Police said
they had taken the two men into custody on Thursday after a raid on their drugs
factory in central Chhattisgarh state, where dozens more women were still in
hospital after undergoing the surgery.
The deaths
have triggered widespread criticism of a government-run programme that offers
poor Indian women cash incentives to get sterilised, in what activists say are
often horrible conditions.
Superintendent
Om Prakash Pal told AFP the two men, who ran a drug-making unit in the state
capital Raipur, would be questioned on "the quality of drugs they were
making".
Their
arrest came a day after police detained the surgeon who performed the
operations, R. K. Gupta, who has blamed poor-quality drugs for the deaths.
A local official who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP that evidence had been burned at the arrested men's factory.
A local official who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP that evidence had been burned at the arrested men's factory.
"We
conducted a raid yesterday. We found drugs had been burned in large
quantities," said the official.
"Maybe
they got scared and knew that we would come calling."
Gupta
operated on 83 women in just five hours on Saturday -- spending an average of
less than four minutes on each patient.
He has
accused the government of making him a scapegoat for the controversial
sterilisation scheme, which pays impoverished women 1,400 rupees ($23) to go
under the knife.
Drugs
banned
Although no
cause of death has officially been given, authorities speculated that the women
had died of septic shock.
The state
has launched a judicial enquiry, and Chief Minister Raman Singh said the drugs
the women took were being examined.
The state
government has banned five drugs used at the camp pending investigations,
including an antibiotic and a pain killer.
Indian
opposition activists demonstrate against the deaths of women who were
sterilised
in a government-run programme, during a rally in Raipur on
November 12, 2014
(AFP Photo)
|
The victims
had suffered vomiting and a dramatic fall in blood pressure on Monday after
undergoing laparoscopic sterilisation, a process in which the fallopian tubes
are tied.
Human Rights
Watch has said health workers in India are coercing women into getting
sterilised, under pressure to meet informal targets.
Health
Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda denied that India set sterilisation targets for
local authorities in an effort to control the growth of its billion-plus
population.
But HRW
said that although India scrapped national sterilisation targets in 1996, local
health workers were still given quotas for the procedure and their jobs were on
the line if they failed to meet them.
The United
Nations has called for all those responsible for the deaths to be held
accountable and said that contraceptive choices should be made "without
any forms of incentives".
"Any
laws, procedures or protocols that might have allowed or contributed to the
deaths and other human rights violations should be reformed or changed to
prevent recurrences," it said in a statement on Thursday.
Singh has
sacked the surgeon who conducted the operations and the chief medical officer
who supervised them.
The operations
were carried out at a decommissioned hospital on the outskirts of Bilaspur. The
actual operating theatre was sealed off on Friday, guarded by about six police
officers.
Sterilisation
is one of the most popular methods of family planning in India, and many state
governments organise mass camps where mainly poor, rural women can undergo the
usually straightforward procedure.
A total of
336 people have died as a result of sterilisations in India in the three years
since 2010, according to national government figures.
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