Doctors have alleged that insurance companies were behind the racket of “uterus scam” in several districts.

Speaking at a news meet in Patna on Tuesday, senior functionaries of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) claimed that doctors and hospitals in some of the districts like Samastipur, Begusarai and Muzaffarpur are wrongly being indicted for hysterectomy under the National Health Insurance Scheme for BPL families.

Under the scheme, the central government provides smart cards worth Rs 30,000 with a validity period of one year to the BPL families. Last month, it came to light that hundreds of women, including many of them under 20, underwent the surgery. It was also reported that many hospitals even showed conducting operations on men for submitting inflated bills to the insurance companies.

IMA president Arun Kumar Thakur, however, refuted all allegations against the doctors saying that it was a deep-rooted conspiracy chalked out by insurance companies to dupe money meant to be given to hospitals.

“We are against such generalized allegations which are doing the rounds without any thorough inquiry and proofs. Under the scheme, empanelled hospitals are to be provided Rs 10,000 for each patient for conducting surgeries like cholecystostomy, appendicectomy, hysterectomy among others. The hospitals that conducted these surgeries on the needy people have not even been paid by the insurance companies and charges have been levelled against them. No doctor would conduct these surgeries without indications,” he said.

The association has even formed a four-member committee headed by veteran gynaecologist Manju Geeta Mishra to carry out a probe in the matter.

“The government should first ask for the individual complaints if someone feels that she had wrongly been operated upon. Our committee will then check whether the surgery was needed or not in those cases. But the way it is happening now, it certainly seems to be malafide intention of those with vested interest and it is unfortunate that some bureaucrats like district magistrates are backing it,” alleged Sehjanand Prasad, a senior IMA member.

The members also stressed that conducting surgeries would mean no monetary benefit for the hospitals as the operations were expensive and hospitals made a profit of barely Rs 1,000-Rs 1,500 per surgery.

“To our knowledge, no hospital that has carried out the surgeries under the scheme has been paid a single penny till date. In this case, the hospitals running on losses are being dragged into this controversy,” IMA functionary Sushma Prasad said.

On Sunday, Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan demanded a CBI probe into the alleged “uterus scam”. The state government has already started an investigation.