An Indian court has sentenced a doctor to two years in prison for using ultrasound tests to determine the sex of unborn babies, a practice that has led to the abortion of millions of female foetuses.

It is the first time any doctor has been convicted under a 1994 law banning sex-determination tests. Campaigners against selective abortion said they hoped it would send a message to doctors across India, where many clinics also treat British Asian women who want terminations.

Anil Sabsani, a radiologist, was caught in a sting operation in 2001, telling an undercover investigator that she was carrying a female foetus but that her pregnancy could be "taken care of".

Sabsani and his assistant, Kartar Singh, were sentenced yesterday to two years in prison and fined 5,000 rupees (£72) each. They were tried in Palwal, a city in Haryana state, south of New Delhi, where Sabsani had his practice.

Hundreds of thousands of female foetuses are believed to be aborted every year in India after sex-determination tests. A study published in The Lancet in January suggested that as many as 10 million female foetuses had been aborted in the past 20 years.

In 2001, authorities responsible for monitoring doctors sent an undercover team to Sabsani’s office to see if he would reveal the gender of a foetus, said R.C. Aggarwal, Haryana’s chief medical officer. Sabsani told the undercover team he would reveal the sex if he was paid an additional 1,500 rupees (£20).

Mr Aggarwal, who was part of the team monitoring the state’s doctors, said there were cases pending against three other doctors on similar charges in Haryana courts. But he was not certain when those cases would go to trial because of India's overburdened judicial system.

Women’s rights activists had mixed feelings about the verdict. "In 12 years of the law being in force, this is the first time the government has taken action," said Ranjana Kumari, an activist with the New Delhi-based Centre for Social Research.

"Revealing that the foetus is female, results in it being aborted. This is akin to murder and the punishment should have been more severe."

There has long been a preference for boys among parents in India, where a bride’s family traditionally gives cash and gifts as a dowry to the groom’s relatives. Indeed, ultrasound clinics used to advertise with the slogan: "Pay 1,000 rupees now for a test, rather than 100,000 rupees later."

The Lancet study, which came up with the figure of 10 million female foetuses aborted, was based on data on female fertility from a continuing Indian national survey.

Comparing the data with the natural gender ratio from other countries, they estimated that 13.6 million to 13.8 million girls should have been born in 1997 in India. However, only 13.1 million were reported, the study said, meaning that at least 500,000 girls were "missing" annually.

India’s census in part backs up the finding. The number of girls per 1,000 boys declined in the country from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001.

Indian doctors say British Asian women also travel to India for selective abortions, usually after undergoing tests in the UK to determine the sex of their unborn children.

Dr Puneet Bedi, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Indrapastha Apollo hospital in New Delhi, told the BBC earlier this month that British women were favoured clients at abortion clinics across India because they would pay ten or 20 times more than local women for a termination.

Dr Bedi told BBC Five Live Breakfast: "I have often been approached by people who are willing to send someone to my practice. There are transfers from GPs in England to the gynaecologists in Delhi - that is a fact. It is an organised industry, an organised mafia among doctors."

Dr Bedi added that Indian families did not want girls because they were seen as second class citizens. "Every time a girl is born, the whole family goes into mourning. Every time a woman is pregnant, there is a lot of pressure to produce a son," he said.

The consultant said that the average cost for an Indian woman to have an abortion was around £100, whereas British Asian women could pay several thousand pounds.

"I do not known of any doctor who does not have half a dozen colleagues or medical school friends in England already practising - sometimes in areas where there is a large Indian population," he added. "In this business there is a core of silence like every other organised white collar crime."

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