Crackdown flushes out fake doctors

Patna: Authorities in Bihar jailed 15 individuals who masqueraded as doctors and issued notices to 70 pathology clinics run by officials with fake qualifications.

Most of the arrested doctors, who ran well set-up clinics, were not qualified to practise medicine. Some of them had trained in the ancient art of treatment.

However, they are accused of putting up big boards outside their clinics, which were successful practices. The fake doctors, who also stand accused of cheating poor patients, were allegedly in the habit of prescribing false medication.

Their arrests — in what is being considered one of the biggest crackdowns in the state targeting the medical profession — came after complaints made by patients and followed raids in the Purnia district of eastern Bihar early this week.

"Most of the arrested doctors had studied arts subjects or Ayurveda but claimed they were leading practitioners of modern medicines with thousands of patients on their lists," N. Shravana Kumar, the Purnia district magistrate who ordered the crackdown, told Gulf News yesterday.

S. Vishwas, also known as Soni and one of the arrested fake doctors, was a classic case of playing reckless with the lives of common men.

Officials said the 35-year-old "doctor" who ran Vishwas Nursing Home, off Doctors Bazar, which is locally known as post-mortem road, held an intermediate degree in arts but she was passed herself off as a leading gynaecologist.

Husband's guidance

Like her, "physician" S.K. Gutpa too held an arts degree while "gynaecologist" Anjana D. Kapoor told the police how she had been advised by her husband and genuine doctor D. Kapoor to start her own practise under his able guidance.

Investigations say many of the arrested doctors had been into the medical profession for well over a decade — some even 15 years — until the local administration got wind of the fraud and launched the crackdown.

Many wore aprons while stethoscopes hung from their necks at the time of their arrests.