India sterilisation: Police arrest drug factory owners
Relatives of patients, who suffered from complications after undergoing mass sterilisation, rest at a waiting room at the Apollo hospital in Bilaspur on Friday . PHOTO BY AFP
What you need to know:
A pile of ash was found in the building along with the remains of medicine packets, news agencies report.
New Delhi- Indian police have arrested the owners of two pharmaceutical factories as part of the investigation into the deaths of 15 women after sterilisation surgery.
The two men were held on charges of destroying evidence - which they deny.
Doctor arrested
The doctor, who conducted the surgery, has also been detained. He denies negligence, saying the medicine administered may have been faulty.
Their cause of death remains unclear. The surgeries were part of a state-run mass sterilisation campaign.
The results of the post-mortem examinations of the 15 women who died in Chhattisgarh state have not been made public yet.
On Thursday police raided the factory which manufactured some of the drugs administered to the women who died after the sterilisation surgery.
Ramesh Mahawar, the factory owner, who was arrested along with his son, told Reuters that he was being “harrassed” and denied his medicines had any connection to the deaths.
Their arrests came one day after that of the doctor who conducted the surgery.
