The 15-year-old son of two Indian doctors has performed a Caesarean section in an apparent attempt to get into the Guinness World Records book.

Dhileepan Raj carried out the operation on a 20-year-old woman in April under the supervision of his parents, who own and run a private maternity clinic in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

His father, K Murugesan, recorded the operation on video and showed the footage to the local chapter of the Indian Medical Association, saying that he wanted his son to win a Guinness record as the world’s youngest surgeon.

Dr Murugesan told the medical association in his home town of Manaparai that he had been training his son for three years and that it was not the first time that the boy had performed an operation.

When the chapter members reacted with horror, accusing him of violating medical ethics, Dr Murugesan denied any wrongdoing and accused them of being jealous of his son’s achievements.

He argued that if a 10-year-old is allowed to drive a car and a 15-year-old can graduate as a doctor in the United States, then his son should be allowed to be a surgeon.

In the film Dr Murugesan is shown delivering a spinal anaesthetic, although it is not clear if the patient is aware that his son is going to perform the operation, according to doctors who watched the footage.

The baby was born with a noticeable lump on the spinal cord, but the defect had nothing to do with the surgery, they said. Local media quoted relatives of the mother as saying that she and the baby were both in good health.

“We were all shocked, but he just didn’t listen,” said Venkatesh Prasad, secretary of the Manaparai Medical Association. “He said that we were jealous and were not recognising his son’s progress. He had no consideration for the ethics of the surgery.”

Dr Prasad and his colleagues reported the incident to the state medical association in Chennai, formerly Madras, about 300 miles (500km) away.

Dr Murugesan, whose wife is a gynaecologist, has since retracted his claim, saying that he performed the surgery while his son watched.

“We allowed [him] to watch the surgery only to motivate him to pursue medicine after his school,” NDTV quoted Dr Murugesan as saying. But he could still be stripped of his licence and even face criminal charges, according to local doctors and officials.

V K Subburaj, the state health secretary, said yesterday that the local government would investigate the incident, which has shocked the nation.

“We’ll get the report and then we’ll see whether there are any violations . . . prima facie it looks like there is a big violation,” he said. “We will definitely take action against the medical officers concerned.”

The incident highlights the poor regulation of myriad private clinics in India, which provide healthcare to hundreds of millions of people in the absence of sufficient staff or resources for state hospitals.

It also reflects the enduring fascination of Indians with setting world records, even when they put lives in danger.

Last year a four-year-old boy tried to run a 43-mile marathon in an attempt to enter the Indian version of Guinness World Records. Doctors stopped the boy when he showed signs of exhaustion after 40 miles and later found him to be malnourished, anaemic and under cardiac stress.

Healing hands

Akrit Jaswal, a 12-year-old from India, is studying for a science degree, but in his spare time tries to find a cure for cancer – and performed his first operation five years ago. When a local girl in the Himalayan village of Nurpur burnt her fingers, fusing them together, he used a scalpel to separate her tendons – cementing his celebrity status. He now hopes to be the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize

Fyodor Uglov claims to be the world’s oldest surgeon. Even after celebrating his 100th birthday in 2004 he refused to hang up his scrubs and has performed more than 6,000 operations during his 75-year career. Serving in the medical battalion during the 1941-1944 Siege of Leningrad, now St Petersburg, he worked on wounded civilians and soldiers while under fire

Explore Asia News

• China News

Times Recommends

• 'Great Schlep' may seal deal for Obama
• Hindu 'storm troopers' flex their muscles
• Ahtisaari: deserved reward for (failed) plan