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Maharashtra: On August 25th, an IVF doctor in Mumbai has been held guilty by the Maharashtra Consumer Commission for charging a man hefty amounts of fees for seeking a child through a surrogacy procedure and illegally withholding his frozen semen sample for over 10 years.
The IVF doctor has been ordered by the commission to pay compensation of over Rs 10 lakh to the man and also ordered him to return the frozen semen sample within eight weeks.
An order was passed last week by the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, which held the doctor guilty of using unfair means and fraudulent practices in the collection of a hefty amount of money, which he had neither the right nor the ability to charge.
The doctor was first approached by the complainant, a 49-year-old unmarried man, in 2015 for a child through IVF-ICSI with the usage of donor eggs, his own sperm and a surrogate mother for the surrogacy procedure to take place.
According to the reports, the man paid Rs 5.50 lakh to the doctor in 2015-16 and was charged an additional fee of Rs 50,000 as “legal charge”. The commission found that the doctor had no authority to charge the legal fees and that he is unable to provide any explanations about the use of this money.
In a statement, the commission has said that the doctor did not confine himself to rendering medical advice and medical treatment for a professional fee.
The commission said, “It is clear to us that the opposite party (doctor) has crossed the boundary of his own calling and has gone well beyond the practice of medicine in his anxiety to extract money at every stage,” the commission remarked.
The man said that his first cycle of IVF failed in 2015, and the second cycle resulted in a miscarriage in 2016. He also claims that the IVF doctor was deliberately creating unsuccessful procedures so that he could keep extracting more money from him and trading his semen samples, which were taken 3 different times.
The commission rejected the claim, noting the complainant provided no expert opinion or medical literature proving a high sperm count guarantees a live birth.
It was pointed out that the doctor didn't provide the patient with any paperwork regarding the surrogacy, consent forms, sonography and embryology reports.
The doctor is found guilty of obtaining a hefty amount of money from the man and retaining his sperm for over a decade. He is directed to return the frozen sperm sample within 8 weeks and to pay Rs 10 Lakh compensation within 30 days; failing to do so will result in an additional charge of 12 percent interest on the compensation amount.
(Rh/ARC)
