Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday directed the Telangana state government and its authorities to take steps to safeguard the unborn babies and surrogate mothers who have been left in the lurch after the police raid on an infertility centre in the city recently.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice T. Rajani was dealing with a suo motu case based on a letter by Justice Suresh Kumar Kait to the Chief Justice of the High Court referring to news reports carried on June 19, 2017 in Deccan Chronicle with regard to the police raid on a private hospital on credible information that the hospital was carrying out surrogacy procedures without following the due norms.

The state government has submitted a report informing the court that Sai Kiran Hospital & Kiran Infertility Centre at Banjara Hills has been running the surrogacy centre without valid permissions and it looked like a refugee centre and not an infertility centre.

The government report brought to the notice of the court that the management of the centre has only obtained permission for infertility and ultrasound scan. Dr Samith Sekhar, who was in charge of surrogacy affairs at the centre, has only an MBBS degree and the Centre was run by counsellors in gynaecology, urology, clinical embryology and andrology.

According to the report, there are 48 surrogacy mothers in the centre, a majority of them from families categorised as below the poverty line. The management was running the assisted reproductive clinic illegally, and did not maintain surrogacy agreements. The police suspected that children were being smuggled out of the centre.