AHMEDABAD: When district officials in Mehsana studied records of gynaecologists recently, they were stunned to find out that many were virtually running son-producing centres. Mehsana town is infamous with its ratio at just 760 girls per 1,000 boys – the lowest in the country.

Some of the doctors in the region have individual ratios of just 600 per 1,000 boys in the past few months. Alarmed, government officials have started monitoring the individual sex ratios of doctors.

On Wednesday, district collector Rajkumar Beniwal suspended the licence of 15 gynaecologists for three months because of the high number of boys they were delivering at their clinics. One doctor, for instance, delivered just 250 girls incomparison to 334 boys between April and November 2011. Despite strict requirements of the Pre-Conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, many have been accused of underreporting number of expecting mothers who have undergone sonography at their clinics.

“If a doctor delivers 50 babies every month, the sonography machine has to be used at least 100 times,” Beniwal said. “But these doctors have informed us of only 10 instances where the machine is used.” Chief district health officer Deepak Jagani says Mehsana has hit the lowest ebb on the gender index, according to the Census 2011 figures.