NRI doctor faces inquiries in UK for arranging illegal abortions for British women

LONDON, NOVEMBER 28, 2004
PTI

: A Non-Resident Indian doctor based in the UK is facing three separate inquiries for arranging illegal late-term abortions for British women, a leading daily claimed on Sunday.

Dr Saroj Adlakha

Dr Saroj Adlakha, who runs her own practice in Kings Heath, Birmingham, is being investigated by Prof Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer; the health trust that registers general practitioners in her area; and the General Medical Council which governs the conduct of all doctors in this country.

Dr Adlakha was filmed on video shot covertly by an undercover reporter of The Sunday Telegraph . She admitted on video that she had arranged for a woman to travel to Barcelona in order to have her healthy 31 1/2 week foetus terminated. She is now off work pending an investigation, the report said on Sunday.

She also agreed to help to arrange a similar abortion for undercover reporters. This included the offer of medical help - lying to a British hospital in order to obtain a scan to pass to the Ginemedex clinic in Spain - and advising on cheap flights to get there. The clinic was at the centre of an expose by the newspaper last month

According to the newspaper report, hundreds of British women, who have healthy late-term pregnancies but want an abortion for "social" reasons, are being directed to Ginemedex by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, an NHS-funded charity.

BPAS telephone advisers, who also helped Dr Adlakha, said that they recommended the clinic despite the fact that it operates contrary to Spanish law. Staff at Ginemedex admitted to fabricating patients' paperwork so as to evade prosecution