If the rest of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 is about regulating who may use prenatal technology, Section 6 is the one provision that simply says no. Sitting in Chapter III, it imposes a flat, exception-less prohibition on using any prenatal diagnostic technique — expressly including ultrasonography — to find out the sex of a foetus, and, after the 2002 amendment, on causing sex selection before or after conception by any means whatsoever. For judiciary and CLAT-PG aspirants this is the conceptual heart of the statute: every offence section, every Form F entry and every prosecution ultimately traces back to a breach of the command in Section 6. This chapter unpacks each clause, the difference between ‘determination’ and ‘selection’, the relationship with the regulatory scheme, and the Supreme Court and High Court decisions that have given the section its teeth.
The text and statutory placement of Section 6
Section 6 falls within Chapter III of the PCPNDT Act, which is titled “Regulation of Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques”. It follows Section 4 (which lays down the limited medical conditions in which a prenatal diagnostic test may at all be conducted) and Section 5 (written consent and the bar on communicating sex), and it operates as the chapter’s emphatic full stop. The section is headed “Determination of sex prohibited” and reads, in substance: “On and from the commencement of this Act, — (a) no Genetic Counselling Centre or Genetic Laboratory or Genetic Clinic shall conduct or cause to be conducted in its Centre, Laboratory or Clinic, pre-natal diagnostic techniques including ultrasonography, for the purpose of determining the sex of a foetus; (b) no person shall conduct or cause to be conducted any pre-natal diagnostic techniques including ultrasonography for the purpose of determining the sex of a foetus; and (c) no person shall, by whatever means, cause or allow to be caused selection of sex before or after conception.”
Three features are worth fixing at the outset. First, the prohibition is absolute — unlike Section 4, there is no carved-out exception for genetic disorders or any other indication. There is never a lawful reason to determine sex. Second, the words “including ultrasonography” were deliberately inserted to close the most common loophole, because ordinary ultrasound scanning is the cheapest and most widespread means of sex detection. Third, clause (c) widens the net beyond determination to selection, capturing pre-conception technologies. To see how Section 6 fits the larger architecture, read it alongside the regulation of genetic counselling centres and clinics and the standalone prohibition on communicating the sex of the foetus.
Clause (a): the prohibition aimed at institutions
Clause (a) is addressed to bodies — Genetic Counselling Centres, Genetic Laboratories and Genetic Clinics as those terms are defined in Section 2. It bars any such registered (or even unregistered) facility from conducting, or causing to be conducted, prenatal diagnostic techniques for the purpose of determining sex. The phrase “cause to be conducted” is critical: it reaches the clinic owner or the registered medical practitioner in charge even where the actual scan is performed by a technician or sonologist, defeating the defence that the proprietor was not personally at the machine.
Because clause (a) targets the regulated entities, it is the clause that dovetails with the registration and record-keeping regime. A clinic that maintains an incomplete Form F — the statutory record of every procedure mandated by the Rules — effectively makes it impossible to prove that the scan was not for sex determination. That evidentiary linkage is why the Supreme Court in Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India v. Union of India treated Form F not as clerical housekeeping but as a condition precedent to lawful testing, a point developed below. Clause (a) is also why an “ultrasound-only” clinic cannot escape the Act by claiming it merely does growth scans; the purpose, not the label, governs.
Clause (b): the prohibition aimed at every person
Clause (b) is the residual, all-encompassing limb. Where clause (a) speaks to institutions, clause (b) addresses “no person” — meaning anyone at all, registered or not, doctor or layperson, who conducts or causes to be conducted any prenatal diagnostic technique including ultrasonography to determine foetal sex. This is what allows prosecution of an itinerant operator with a portable ultrasound machine, of a quack, or of a relative who arranges a clandestine scan. It also means the pregnant woman’s husband or in-laws who ‘cause’ the test to be done fall within the prohibition.
The statute treats the pregnant woman herself with deliberate leniency: Section 24 of the Act raises a presumption that she was compelled to undergo the procedure unless the contrary is proved, and the Act’s scheme is designed to punish those who exploit and coerce rather than the woman who is usually the victim of familial pressure. This protective philosophy was endorsed by the Bombay High Court in Vinod Soni v. Union of India, 2005 Cri LJ 3408, where a couple challenged the very constitutionality of the ban, arguing that choosing the sex of one’s child fell within the right to personal liberty under Article 21. The Court flatly rejected the argument, holding that Article 21 cannot be stretched to include a liberty to determine or select the sex of a child and that the foetus has a right to full development irrespective of sex.
Clause (c): from determination to selection (the 2002 amendment)
Clause (c) was inserted by the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Amendment Act, 2002, which also re-christened the statute as the “Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act”. The amendment was a direct legislative response to a new generation of technologies — sperm sorting, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and other assisted-reproduction methods — that could skew the sex of a child before conception, neatly side-stepping a law drafted only against post-conception determination.
Clause (c) therefore prohibits any person from causing or allowing to be caused selection of sex “before or after conception” and “by whatever means”. The breadth is intentional: the words “by whatever means” are technology-neutral, so that future methods are captured without further amendment. The reframing of the statute’s title and the insertion of clause (c) flowed substantially from the interim orders of the Supreme Court in Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) v. Union of India, AIR 2001 SC 2007 : (2001) 5 SCC 577, which had repeatedly flagged the gap between the 1994 Act and emerging pre-conception techniques. For the legislative background and the demographic crisis that prompted all of this, see the introduction, object and background to sex-selective abortion.
Determination versus selection: a distinction that matters
Aspirants frequently conflate “determination of sex” with “sex selection”, but the Act treats them as distinct mischiefs and Section 6 prohibits both. Determination (clauses (a) and (b)) is the act of ascertaining the existing sex of a foetus already conceived — typically by ultrasound — usually as the prelude to a sex-selective abortion of a female foetus. Selection (clause (c)) is the act of engineering the sex of the resulting child, which may occur before conception (e.g., sorting sperm to favour Y-bearing cells) or after (e.g., choosing which embryo to implant).
The practical consequence is that a prosecution need not always prove that an abortion followed. The offence under Section 6 is complete the moment the prohibited purpose — determining or selecting sex — attaches to the technique. This is why the Act is, in effect, an “inchoate” or preventive statute: it strikes at the diagnostic step rather than waiting for the terminal act of foeticide, which is separately governed by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971. Keeping the two statutes apart is a common examiner’s trap: the MTP Act regulates when a pregnancy may be lawfully terminated; the PCPNDT Act, through Section 6, makes the reason — knowing or selecting sex — itself unlawful.
How Section 6 interacts with Sections 4 and 5
Section 6 does not operate in isolation. Section 4 permits prenatal diagnostic techniques only for detecting specified abnormalities (chromosomal, genetic, congenital and the like) and only where the conditions and consent requirements are satisfied. Even when a test is lawful under Section 4, Section 5(2) forbids the conducting person from communicating the sex of the foetus to anyone, and Section 6 independently forbids conducting the technique for the purpose of determining sex at all.
The three provisions therefore form a layered defence. Section 4 controls the gateway (is any test permissible?); Section 6 controls the purpose (the test must never be for sex determination or selection); and Section 5 controls the output (sex must never be disclosed). A practitioner who performs a Section 4-compliant amniocentesis for a genuine genetic indication, but then whispers the sex to the family, breaches Section 5 even if the original test was lawful; a practitioner who scans purely to reveal sex breaches Section 6 regardless of consent. Because these duties overlap, courts read incomplete records as evidence of a Section 6 breach — the logic the Supreme Court adopted in the FOGSI case discussed below. The disclosure limb is treated in detail in the chapter on the prohibition on communicating the sex of the foetus.
CEHAT v. Union of India: turning Section 6 from text into practice
The single most important enforcement decision is Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) v. Union of India, AIR 2001 SC 2007 : (2001) 5 SCC 577. The petition under Article 32 was filed because, five years after the Act came into force in 1996, neither the Centre nor the States had implemented it; clinics offering sex determination were operating openly and the prohibition in Section 6 was a dead letter on paper.
By its order of 4 May 2001 (followed by directions on 7 November 2001, 11 December 2001 and later dates), the Supreme Court issued a battery of mandatory directions: appoint and empower Appropriate Authorities at State, district and sub-district levels; require the Central Supervisory Board to meet regularly and seek quarterly returns from the States; launch sustained public-awareness campaigns through print and electronic media against prenatal sex determination; and take prompt action against advertisements and unregistered bodies. The Court memorably observed that “developed medical science is misused to get rid of a girl child before birth”. CEHAT is significant for Section 6 because it converted an unenforced prohibition into an actively policed one, and several of its directions were later absorbed into the 2002 amendment that added clause (c). The institutional machinery it energised is examined in the chapters on the Central Supervisory Board and the State Supervisory Board.
The Voluntary Health Association of Punjab decisions
Where CEHAT set up the enforcement framework, the Voluntary Health Association of Punjab v. Union of India litigation kept the pressure on. In its judgment reported at (2013) 4 SCC 401, the Supreme Court, alarmed by the continuing decline in the child sex ratio, summoned the Health Secretaries of Punjab, Haryana, the NCT of Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra to explain what steps they had taken, and issued directions for regular monitoring and reporting by authorities, faster disposal of pending prosecutions, and suspension of the medical registration of convicted practitioners.
The Court returned to the matter in a further order on 8 November 2016, reiterating that the orders earlier passed and the provisions of the Act were still not being effectively implemented by many States, and tightening the directions on the constitution of authorities, decoy operations, and the disposal of seized machines. The VHAP orders matter for Section 6 because they make clear that the prohibition is meaningless without robust administrative follow-through — the section creates the duty, but the State machinery must give effect to it.
FOGSI v. Union of India: Form F and the evidentiary teeth of Section 6
One of the most heavily litigated questions has been whether minor lapses in record-keeping should attract the full rigour of the Act. The medical profession argued that a doctor who genuinely conducted a lawful scan should not be prosecuted for an incomplete Form F. The Supreme Court rejected this in Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI) v. Union of India, AIR 2019 SC 2214 : (2019) 6 SCC 283 (decided 3 May 2019). The Court upheld the constitutionality of Section 23 and held that complete and accurate maintenance of Form F is not a clerical formality but a “condition precedent” for undertaking the procedure.
The reasoning is directly tethered to Section 6. Because the Act prohibits any scan for sex determination, the only way an enforcement authority can verify that a particular scan was lawful is through the contemporaneous record. An incomplete or false Form F therefore obscures whether the mandatory preconditions existed and is treated as evidence that the prohibition may have been breached. The Court thus declined to dilute Section 23 into a two-tier scheme of ‘serious’ and ‘trivial’ defaults, reasoning that to do so would gut the deterrent effect of Section 6. This holding should be read with Union of India v. Indian Radiological and Imaging Association, AIR 2018 SC 1422 : (2018) 5 SCC 773, where the Court stressed strict compliance with reporting under Section 23(2) so that the State Medical Council could act against errant practitioners.
Sabu Mathew George: extending the prohibition to the internet
Section 6 prohibits the act of determination and selection; Section 22 separately prohibits advertising sex determination or sex selection. The two converge in the digital age, and the Supreme Court addressed the convergence in Sabu Mathew George v. Union of India, (2018) 3 SCC 229 : AIR 2018 SC 578. The petitioner sought directions to stop search engines — Google, Yahoo and Microsoft — from displaying advertisements and sponsored links promoting prenatal sex selection.
Over a series of orders, the Court evolved what came to be called the “doctrine of auto-block”: it furnished search engines with a list of roughly forty offending search terms and directed that any attempt to look these up should be auto-blocked, while a Nodal Agency was to be constituted to receive complaints and identify further violative content. The case is doctrinally important because it recognises that the mischief Section 6 targets — the demand for and supply of sex-selection services — is now mediated online, and that the statutory prohibition would be hollow if the internet remained an unregulated shop-window. It also illustrates the careful balance the Court struck between Section 22’s prohibition and the free flow of legitimate medical information.
Consequences of breaching Section 6: offences and presumptions
A breach of Section 6 is not a mere regulatory lapse; it is a substantive offence. Section 23 makes contravention of the Act — squarely including Section 6 — punishable, for a registered medical practitioner, with imprisonment up to three years and fine up to ten thousand rupees on first conviction, escalating to five years and fifty thousand rupees on subsequent conviction, alongside reporting to the State Medical Council for suspension or removal of registration. Section 25 penalises contravention of provisions for which no specific penalty is provided.
Two evidentiary provisions sharpen Section 6. Section 24 raises a presumption that a pregnant woman was compelled by her husband or relatives to undergo a prohibited procedure, shifting culpability onto those who coerce. Section 27 makes every offence under the Act cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable, signalling that Parliament regarded sex determination as a grave social evil rather than a negotiable infraction. Together with the FOGSI ruling on Form F, these provisions mean that the prohibition in Section 6 is backed by a presumption-heavy, hard-to-evade enforcement structure.
Constitutional validity of the prohibition
Challenges to Section 6 have uniformly failed. In Vinod Soni v. Union of India, 2005 Cri LJ 3408, the Bombay High Court rejected the contention that the ban on knowing or selecting the sex of one’s child violated the Article 21 right to personal liberty, holding that personal liberty cannot be expanded to encompass a right to determine the sex of a child and that such a reading would defeat the foetus’s right to develop. Subsequent challenges — including arguments that clauses such as 6(c) were vague or that the regulatory burden on clinics was excessive — have been turned away on the footing that the State has a compelling interest in arresting a skewed sex ratio.
The constitutional reasoning rests on a substantive equality rationale: a law that prohibits sex selection is not discriminatory but protective, advancing the dignity and very existence of the girl child. Courts have repeatedly framed female foeticide as an assault on the constitutional values of equality (Article 14) and dignity, so that Section 6 is seen as giving statutory effect to those values rather than infringing any fundamental right. This is the framing the Supreme Court adopted in CEHAT and the VHAP orders, and which the High Court applied in Vinod Soni.
Common exam pitfalls and how to answer
Several recurring errors cost marks. First, candidates state that Section 6 ‘allows’ sex determination for medical reasons — it never does; the medical exceptions live in Section 4, and Section 6 admits of no exception at all. Second, candidates confuse the PCPNDT Act with the MTP Act; remember that the PCPNDT Act criminalises the knowing/selecting of sex, while the MTP Act governs the lawfulness of a termination. Third, candidates forget that clause (c) and the word “selection” were added only in 2002; pre-2002, the Act addressed determination alone.
A model answer should: (i) reproduce the three clauses and locate them in Chapter III; (ii) distinguish determination from selection; (iii) explain the absolute, exception-less character of the prohibition; (iv) anchor enforcement in CEHAT and the VHAP orders; (v) use FOGSI to show how Form F gives the prohibition evidentiary bite; and (vi) close with the constitutional validity established in Vinod Soni. For the institutional and definitional scaffolding, cross-refer to the chapters on definitions and regulation of genetic counselling centres and clinics, and return to the PCPNDT Act notes hub for the full chapter map.
Frequently asked questions
Does Section 6 contain any exception for genuine medical reasons?
No. Section 6 is an absolute, exception-less prohibition on conducting any prenatal technique (including ultrasonography) to determine sex or to cause sex selection. The limited medical indications under which a prenatal diagnostic test may at all be performed live in Section 4 — but even a Section 4-compliant test can never be done for the purpose of determining sex.
What is the difference between sex determination and sex selection under Section 6?
Sex determination (clauses (a) and (b)) means ascertaining the existing sex of a foetus already conceived, usually by ultrasound. Sex selection (clause (c), inserted in 2002) means engineering the sex of the resulting child, before conception (e.g., sperm sorting) or after (e.g., embryo selection). Section 6 prohibits both.
Why does Section 6 expressly mention ultrasonography?
Because ordinary ultrasound is the cheapest and most widespread means of detecting foetal sex, the legislature deliberately wrote ‘including ultrasonography’ into clauses (a) and (b) to close the obvious loophole that a routine scan is not a ‘diagnostic technique’. The purpose of the scan, not its label, governs liability.
Is the pregnant woman punished for undergoing a sex-determination test?
The Act is structured to punish those who conduct, cause or coerce the procedure rather than the woman. Section 24 raises a presumption that the pregnant woman was compelled by her husband or relatives unless the contrary is proved, reflecting the protective philosophy endorsed in Vinod Soni v. Union of India.
How did the courts make Section 6 enforceable in practice?
In CEHAT v. Union of India (AIR 2001 SC 2007) the Supreme Court issued sweeping directions to constitute and empower Appropriate Authorities, activate the Central Supervisory Board and run awareness campaigns. The Voluntary Health Association of Punjab orders (2013 and 2016) kept the States under judicial supervision to actually implement the prohibition.
Can an incomplete Form F lead to liability even if no sex determination occurred?
Yes. In FOGSI v. Union of India (AIR 2019 SC 2214) the Supreme Court held that complete and accurate maintenance of Form F is a condition precedent for the procedure, not a clerical formality. An incomplete record obscures whether the Section 6 prohibition was honoured and is treated as evidence of a possible breach.