Krishnagar, Sept. 16: A court has ordered a Nadia hospital to pay compensation to a woman who became pregnant after having undergone tubectomy.

The additional judge of the district civil court, Harun Al Rashid, instructed the Nakashipara block hospital on Monday to pay Rs 12,362 to Mumtaz Bibi. The 39-year-old resident of Muragachha in Nakashipara delivered a girl in 1991. She underwent the tubectomy operation 10 years before that.

The judge told the hospital authorities that they should sell off its assets if they were unable to raise the money.

Mumtaz, already the mother of four sons and a daughter, had decided on the operation as she and her husband Asgar Mulick, a farmer, were finding it difficult to run the six-member family with a monthly in-come of Rs 250. “I became weak emotionally after my sixth child was born. When I get the money, I will spend it on the education of Tazema. She is 14,” said Mumtaz. The family now earns Rs 3,500 a month with the sons contributing as well.