Click to play videoNew Delhi: Doctors are pillars of any civil society. If you get fake doctors then you are playing a dangerous game with the very foundations of that society.
CNN-IBN’s special investigation team dug deeper into this mystery. Through the RTI act we tried to find just how many of these doctors are actually those who have not even passed their class XII exams.
The Delhi police gave a list of 93 doctors who are under investigation for having forged their academic records like Dr Pankaj Goel.
Goel said, “I have done three years of SR-ship from Deendayal Upadhyay University.”
Police records show that Goel was booked for fraud in 2002, for possessing a forged Class XII mark sheet. Arrested in July 2005, he was soon out on bail.
He is still under investigation but this hasn't stopped him from running his own clinic as a heart and lung specialist.
“I have my own patients. No one can throw me out. In big hospitals, you could be in or out,” Goel added.
Unaware that his case history was known to us, Goel even discussed the problem of fake degrees in medicine.
Goel said, “Fifty per cent Indians don’t know what a doctor is. 50 per cent doctors here have degrees below MBBS the public has to be more alert.”
Another fake doctor is Gopesh Tiwari, who was arrested in August 2003 for forging his Class XII mark sheet. But he too, soon got bail and continues to treat patients at the emergency ward in the Soni Hospital in Jaipur.
He even managed to intern at the famous Sawai Mansingh Medical College in Jaipur.
“Doctors earn good money and people worship them as well,” said Tiwari.
After confirming that their school mark sheets were fake the Delhi police registered cases against these doctors, but then strangely, went slow on the investigations.
Do these doctors have authentic medical degrees? Has the Medical Council of India bothered to examine their medical degrees? Nobody knows about it.
Sunil Patodia too was unwilling to face questions. We found that the MCI had filed a police complaint against Patodia for forging his Class XII mark sheet in 2002. Arrested in December 2004, he too is out on bail he is now working in the Jain Charitable Hospital, New Delhi.
How many doctors are practicing in India with forged academic qualifications?
The Medical Council of India has a list but is unwilling deregister them.
And inspite of police cases against them, these so-called doctors continue to handle patients. Is the health minister watching? When will he act?
(With inputs from Prashant Sharma and Rajesh Bhardwaj)
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