Illegal IVF racket busted during raids, 14 booked

The Haryana health department has busted an illegal in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) centre in Sushant Lok Phase 1 in Gurugram that allegedly operated a cross-border surrogacy racket catering to infertile couples from India, China, and Australia.

- Debashish Karmakar

Police said on Thursday they recovered 84 cryogenically frozen embryos prepared for implantation into surrogate mothers during a raid late last month.

The centre, operating under the name Fertility Cure Centre, functioned in the guise of an ultrasound clinic from a five-storey building in Block B of Sushant Lok Phase 1, according to the FIR whose copy is with HT. It had allegedly been running for over a year, illegally extracting, processing, and storing gametes - sperm and ovum - without written consent from donors as mandatory per law, police said.

According to police, the centre paid women from economically weaker backgrounds in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh up to ₹25,000 to donate healthy ova. It also charged couples between ₹12 lakh and ₹14 lakh for surrogacy procedures. “The centre had a network of agents working on commission who identified unmarried women in urgent need of money and lured them into becoming surrogates,” said a senior police officer.

He said Indian couples living abroad are also suspected of being the centre's customers, according to patient details recovered by police which mention several passport numbers.

Police identified the owner of the centre as Manju Sharma, who is yet to be arrested.