Sickening Truth: Dr Fake playing with human lives

New Delhi: They are supposed to be the pillars of any civil society. You trust them with your life during emergencies and they are vowed under an oath of saving human lives at any cost.

But what if the friendly doctor treating you or your loved ones is a fraud? What if he has multiple cases of fraud registered against him and is operating on a fake degree?

Sounds scary? Well, that’s the reality in a number of hospitals across India. CNN-IBN's Special Investigation Team decided to expose the dirty side of doctors.

Using the Government's Right to Information tool, the team found out just how many people are currently working as doctors in many top hospitals of the country when the Medical Council of India (MCI) isn’t even recognizing their MBBS degrees.

The MCI has records of all registered doctors in India. The CNN-IBN SIT filed an RTI application to find out how many doctors with fraudulent foreign degrees had the body detected in the last 15 years.

The team got a list of 53 doctors and tracked down some of them. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation with one of them:

CNN-IBN: Good name, sir?

Doctor: O mera naam to bada kharab sa hai, yaar. (Oh, I don’t have a good name)

CNN-IBN: Shubh naam sir? (Your good name sir)

Doctor: Shubh naam nahi mera naam hi naam hai (I have a famous name.)

CNN-IBN: Kya hai sir? (What is it, sir?)

Doctor: Captain Gautam.

But Captain Gautam is actually Dr Pravesh Raj. MCI records say he got a fake MD degree from the Sechenov Medical Academy, Moscow in 2000.

The MCI even filed a police complaint against him in Delhi in 2004.

The SIT filed a Right To Information query with the Delhi police asking how many cases did they register based on complaints filed by the MCI. The application also sought information on if some of these fake doctors prosecuted.

The Delhi police provided a list of 93 doctors with fake medical degrees, with cases registered against them.

But no case was registered against Pravesh Raj, who continues to treat unsuspecting patients at the Railway Hospital in Haryana's Yamunanagar.

The team found that records of the Medical Council of India on doctors with fake degrees and the cases registered by the Delhi police just do not match.

Raj is not the only defaulter. The team also uncovered another blatant fraud. Meet Dr Ankur Jain.

“I did my MD degree from Kasturba Medical College in Mangalore,” he says.

Not true, say MCI records.

Ankur Jain actually acquired a fake degree from the Russian State Medical University in 2001. Booked by the police for fraud in 2005, he was arrested in August 2006, but was soon out on bail.

Though under investigation, Jain still practices as skin specialist at the Bhagwati super-speciality hospital in Delhi.

“I'm also working in Munnimayaram Jain hospital and Navjivan Hospital,” he says.

The MCI has a list of doctors with fake foreign degrees, but the list is suspiciously incomplete. Records of the MCI and the Delhi Police do not match yet again.

But more alarmingly, doctors being investigated for fake degrees continue to practice and treat patients.

Meet Dr Vivek Kumar. He has a fake Medical degree from the Russian State Medical University, and has a police case registered against him.

But while the MCI records say his MD degree is forged, police records say his 10+2 marksheet is forged.

Are details being manipulated so that no action is taken against him? While Kumar was booked for fraud in 2005, he is yet to be arrested.

He is currently a Resident Medical Officer in Yashoda Hospital, one of UP's biggest multi-specialty Hospitals.

Another doctor, Dr Shiv Kumar is also under scanner. MCI records say he acquired his fake MD degree in 1996 from the Kazakh State Medical University.

Arrested in July 2003 for fraud, the Delhi police gave him a clean chit and closed the case against him a year later.

Shiv Kumar continues to be an employee of the Haryana government health department. He is merely serving out a year of suspension for having a fake degree. He is currently attached to the Civil Hospital at Jind in Haryana.

(With Prashant Sharma, Nidhi Bharadwaj & Rajesh Bhardwaj, inputs from Rohit Khanna)

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