June 26, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 10, 1428

CHENNAI, June 25: Police in southern India said on Monday they had detained a doctor couple who allowed their 15-year-old son to perform a caesarian section in a bid to enter the record books.

The pair raised a furore after they proudly showed colleagues a video allegedly showing their schoolboy son Dileepan Raj cut open an expectant mother and claimed he deserved a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

“The doctor and his wife are being questioned. It is not an arrest at the moment,” a police spokesman in Mannaparai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu said.

The police spokesman said a decision on whether criminal charges would be filed against K. Murugesan and his wife, who run a private clinic, would be made after the interrogation.

Members of an Indian Medical Association branch in Tamil Nadu said last week that they were stunned when Murugesan showed them a video of the operation, and state health minister K.K. Ramachandran immediately promised ‘tough action’.

Murugesan was initially unrepentant over his action – and even said his son had performed surgery before.“What is wrong with my son performing surgery, when a 10-year-old can drive a car and a 15-year-old can get a medical degree in America?” he was quoted as saying last week by the Tamil-language Kumudam Reporter, a bi-weekly paper.

But with public condemnation of the act mounting, Murugesan later reportedly said his son was a mere witness to the surgery performed by his gynaecologist wife.

“The boy did not perform the operation, he was just assisting,” an unidentified lawyer for the Murugesan family told NDTV news channel.

There was no law barring the teenager from handling instruments during a surgery, he said.

“There is no compliant from the patient so how can you hold the doctors responsible?” he added.

Medical sources said the baby was born with a congenital defect unrelated to the surgery and was believed to be alive. Officials were looking for the mother, who has the option of filing a complaint to police.

Medical officials said the stunt could lead to the doctor being barred from the medical profession, as well as possible criminal charges for helping a minor inflict injury. His son could also face charges.—AFP