Alleged teen surgeon surrenders to police

15-year-old who delivered a baby by Caesarean spent 10 days in hiding

updated 4:53 p.m. ET July 4, 2007

NEW DELHI - A 15-year-old who allegedly delivered a baby by Caesarean section in an attempt to set a record as the world’s youngest surgeon surrendered to a court in southern India Wednesday after 10 days in hiding, police said.

Dhileepan Raj had been missing since his parents were arrested last month, said Raj Sekharan, a police official in southern Tamil Nadu state.

The parents of Dhileepan Raj, both doctors, are suspected of supervising their son while he performed a Caesarean section at a maternity hospital they run in the city of Manaparai. They are in prison awaiting trial.

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Police have charged the three with cheating, forgery of records, endangering human life, concealing evidence and abetting a crime.

The Tamil Nadu chapter of the Indian Medical Association said last month that Dr. K. Murugesan showed a video recording of his son performing a Caesarean birth.

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Teen surgeon flees police

The video allegedly showed Murugesan anesthetizing the patient before the boy started the operation, said Venkatesh Prasad, secretary of the medical association.

Murugesan told the association that he wanted to see his son’s name in the Guinness Book of World Records, Prasad said.

Amarilis Espinoza, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records, said in an e-mail from London that Guinness does not endorse such attempts because they encourage “bad medicine.”

The baby that Raj delivered was born with a noticeable lump on the spinal cord, Prasad said, adding that the birth defect had nothing to do with the surgery having been performed by a 15-year-old.

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