Between tracking down middlemen and speaking with individuals accused under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act, I spent time shadowing officers involved in sting operations – raids conducted under the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme. These are no ordinary police teams. They are doctors by profession, stepping into the role of law enforcers to take on those driving India’s illegal sex determination industry.advertisementREAD: Vanishing daughters, Part 1: 10 years of Beti Bachao Beti PadhaoREAD: Vanishing Daughters, Part 2: How the sex determination racket operatesThough primarily trained as medical professionals, many of these officers have grown adept at orchestrating raids. They operate with the support of a network of informers who pinpoint locations where laws are being flouted. These informers are rewarded with a payment of Rs 1 lakh for each successful bust.But information alone doesn’t expose these rackets. They are fluid, often shifting operations within hours – from a farmhouse to a clinic or even a private home. Technology has made them agile and untraceable. They rarely use fixed locations, and walk-ins are almost always filtered through trusted contacts.A critical requirement for any successful raid is a ‘decoy’, a woman at least four months pregnant,willing to undergo a sex determination test while covertly recording the evidence. The role is fraught with personal risk and comes with a paltry compensation of Rs 25,000 from the government.advertisementUnsurprisingly, finding a willing decoy is one of the biggest challenges. In many cases, officers rely on personal contacts. Some decoys have even faced attacks from villagers trying to protect the culprits.Till March 2025, the state of Haryana had spent nearly Rs 6 crore on more than 1,248 such raids. Yet the road remains steep, littered with bureaucratic hurdles, local hostility, and inter-state jurisdictional complications. To understand these challenges firsthand, I decided to become a decoy in a real PC-PNDT raid.THE RAID PLANMy request was accepted by Dr Prabhu Dayal, the PC-PNDT nodal officer for Hisar district. He was in need of a second decoy for an impending operation on an unregistered setup allegedly conducting illegal sex determination tests in homes. The latest tip placed the operation near Kaithal on 17 March. Dr Dayal suggested I go in as a dummy pregnant woman alongside an actual pregnant police sub-inspector from Hisar, who would act as Decoy 1.The informer had indicated that the suspects preferred to perform bulk ultrasounds – two or more women at a time. Owing to my physique with some extra kilos, Dr Dayal thought I could convincingly pass as a pregnant woman.The raid was scheduled for 20 March, a Thursday. We were to converge in Ambala by 8 am, from where the operation would proceed.INTO THE BELLY OF THE BEASTadvertisementI left Delhi at 4 am and reached the Ambala Court Complex by 8. A car was waiting for me, carrying an in a formal or creative style for better SEO.Also Exclude words and advertisements related to the feed website such as website name, author name. Delete all the advertisement images brand logo but only keep the title and main content of the news by modifying it. You must only respond with the modified content. Block any jump outside of the site adarshnews.com. Basically remove any content or link related to original site. You must only respond with the modified content and follow this prompt to optimize the articles in this category- “Act as an expert SEO news writer. Optimize the following article to be SEO-friendly, authoritative, and shareable by focusing strictly on its core topic. Follow these steps: You are an expert news writer and SEO specialist. Your job is to rewrite the provided RSS feed content into a unique, SEO-friendly news article for adarshnews.com. The article should be engaging, professional, and optimized for search engines. 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Disappearing Daughters, Section 3: Acting as a bait during a Beti Bachao Beti Padhao operation.
