New Delhi: It is the duty of a doctor to verify every claim by a patient, Delhi High Court has said, refusing to stay criminal proceedings against a medical practitioner for illegally terminating a 16-year-old girl’s six-week pregnancy and failing to report the matter to the authorities.While the doctor claimed that the minor’s age at the time of abortion was stated to be 20 years and she consented to the procedure, Justice Purushaindra K Kaurav underscored that under law, age has to be “ascertained and recorded, not merely accepted on an unverified oral representation”.The court pointed out that Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act provided that a minor is incapable of independently consenting to termination and her pregnancy cannot be medically terminated without the guardian’s consent in writing.“A practitioner who fails to ascertain age, or who proceeds to terminate a pregnancy on the strength of an orally declared age without any document to support it, does not merely commit a procedural lapse, she disables the very mechanism,” the court said.“A registered medical practitioner performing an invasive procedure that MTP Act itself conditions on the patient’s age is not absolved of the obligation to seek some documentary anchor for that age merely because an escort volunteers a figure,” Justice Kaurav emphasised. “The entire statutory architecture examined presupposes that age is a fact to be ascertained and recorded, not merely accepted on an unverified oral representation from an adult accompanying the patient, particularly where that adult, as later investigation revealed, was not in fact in any relation with the prosecutrix at all.”The case stemmed from an FIR lodged in 2019 relating to allegations that a girl was sexually assaulted and her pregnancy was subsequently terminated. Police initially did not treat the doctor as an accused. However, after the survivor filed a protest petition alleging irregularities in the abortion procedure and concealment of her age, the trial court ordered further investigation.The doctor had challenged the trial court’s Sept 2020 order directing further investigation into whether he and other doctors terminated the pregnancy while knowing she was a minor and then consciously did not report the matter to police under Section 19 of Pocso Act.In her statement, the survivor said that in July 2019, a person, pretended to be her aunt, told the hospital staff that the child belonged to her boyfriend, and said her age was 20.Noting that at the time of admission, no identity or residential proof was obtained at the hospital, the court concluded that the alleged offence against the petitioner was made out from the prosecution records, warranting trial.
