Ellisbridge Police on Sunday arrested 10 male members of a city-based industrialist family for forcing their daughter-in-law Pooja Salat to abort her four-month-old female foetus. The Salat family stays at Isan Apartments near Old Sharda Mandir in Paladi.
The other nine accused in the case, eight female family members and city-based gynaecologist Dr Sanat Joshi — accused of aborting the foetus at his clinic — are presently at large, police said.
The arrests followed when 31-year-old Pooja, accused her husband Chirag (35) and 17 others of mental and physical torture for the past nine years as she had failed to give them a male child. Pooja had also accused Salats of demanding a dowry of Rs 25 lakh.
Mother of twins, nine-year-old Dhwani and Dhruvi, Pooja said that her in-laws had forced her to go for an abortion in 1998, after a sex determination test conducted by Dr Joshi at his clinic in Paladi, revealed that it was a female foetus. Dr Joshi had also been accused of aborting the foetus without Pooja’s consent.
According to case details, daughter of a retired Gandhinagar Sachivalay officer, Pooja married with Chirag on May 10, 1996. After a year, Dhwani and Dhruvi were born.
Pooja once again became pregnant in 1998 with a girl child, which was aborted.
The torture began later, as it was found that Pooja would not be able to conceive again. Though her in-laws accused Pooja of being infertile, Ellisbrigde Police Sub Inspector, RG Goswami said that Chirag had been visiting a sexologist for several years now. “The Salats also demanded a dowry of Rs 25 lakh, which Pooja’s father was unable to pay,” Goswami added.
On June 15, this year, while returning from Mehsana, the Salats threw Pooja and her daughters out of their car near a multiplex in Gandhinagar. They told her not to return until she brings Rs 25 lakh with her.
“The Salats, referring to themselves as millionaires, had asked Pooja to get an amount to match their status,” Goswami added.
Police further said that Pooja’s family and counsel had tried for a compromise, but nothing worked. Finally, an FIR was lodged at Ellisbridge Police on Friday.
“Chirag, his father, Suresh and other males in the family — Jigar, Atul, Milan, Yogendra, Parag, Sailesh, Apurva and Chandrakanta have been arrested, while eight female members of the family and Dr Joshi are yet to be arrested,” Ellisbridge Police Inspector Vinay Shukla said.
Apart from the offence of a female foeticide, the accused have also been booked on charges of physical and mental torture, obscenity, assault and for demanding dowry, police added.