India, March 13 -- A public health official has written to the state government underlining the urgent need to regulate advanced ultrasound technologies that can make illegal sex determination easier and difficult to detect. The March 9 letter follows a recent case detection in Shirur tehsil of Pune district, where a doctor's aide was arrested for allegedly running a sex determination racket using a mobile phone-based ultrasound device.

Maharashtra minister for women and child development Aditi Tatkare raised the issue in the state assembly on March 9 terming the incident "shocking" and said such emerging devices should be brought under the ambit of law.

According to officials, the case came to light after the Pune police conducted a de...