10th pass woman held for running fully equipped illegal abortion clinic in Ggm

A 61-year-old woman who had only completed class 10 was impersonating a doctor and illegally operating a well-equipped abortion clinic at Jyoti Park in Sector 7, said police officers associated with the case.

Investigators said Kusum Tuteja, 61, had done a course at Gurugram civil hospital several years ago, which trained women to deliver children in villages. Still, she gradually established the clinic on the ground floor of her residence. A signboard at her home identified her as a doctor.

Acting on a tip, health department officials sent a pregnant woman to Tuteja’s clinic as a ruse on Tuesday night. The woman obtained tablets from Tuteja after paying her ₹1,500. A short while later, health department officials and police officers raided the clinic and arrested Tuteja. They recovered the money the decoy paid her and strips of three tablets from a dustbin she had sold the decoy customer.

According to investigators, Tuteja asked the decoy to come to the clinic on Wednesday to get the next set of medicines for ₹700.

Tuteja had been running the clinic for at least eight years, according to Dr Harish Kumar, a medical officer posted at Gurugram’s civil surgeon office who led the raiding team.

“She could have been running the clinic for longer than eight years. However, she could not tell us when she completed the course for delivery maids,” said Kumar.

“For the last three years, our team has been cracking down on illegal sonography centres, clinics, and other locations to reduce illegal pregnancy termination. However, Tuteja’s clinic was the first-of-its-kind centre where we discovered a labour table and several other types of equipment that a gynaecologist requires,” he added.

“She offered to give our decoy pregnant woman a medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) kit ₹2,200, which costs no more than ₹400 in the market. We’re trying to figure out where she got the kits. But, unfortunately, it will be difficult to determine how many patients Tuteja saw because she did not have any register or record,” he said.

An FIR was filed against Tuteja at the New Colony police station on Tuesday night under sections 336 (acting rashly or negligently as to endanger human life or the personal safety of others) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940, and the National Medical Commission Act of 2019.

Inspector Dinkar Kumar, station house officer at the New Colony police station, said a thorough investigation was underway, which would reveal how many women visited the clinic on a daily basis and how much money she earned. “These details will emerge over time,” he added.