Fake medical degree racket busted; 13, including 10 'doctors', held in Surat

Ahmedabad: The Surat police on Thursday busted a racket where fake medical degrees were being sold. A total of 13 people have been arrested, including the mastermind and those who were working as 'doctors' using the fake certificates.

Police said that these fake doctors allegedly bought the degree certificates by paying anything between Rs 60,000 to Rs 80,000, adding that a majority of the accused had barely managed to clear their 12th Boards.

The mastermind of the case has been identified as Rasesh Gujarati, a resident of Surat, who has been issuing fake certificates with the help of co-accused B K Rawat. It has been revealed that they had issued over 1,500 such fake degrees to as many individuals in the past few years.

The arrests were made following a raid in the Pandesara area in the city from where several accused were held who were running clinics. They were practicing on the basis of fake degrees of Bachelor of Electro Homeopathy Medical Science (BEMS) certificates which had been issued by Gujarati and another accused identified as BK Rawat, a resident of Ahmedabad.

Police sources said that the accused were giving allopathic medicine without any knowledge or any sort of training. It is suspected that hundreds of such fake doctors are running clinics across the state.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone-4, Vijay Singh Gujarat, in a media briefing said that the raids were carried out at three clinics in Pandesara. The accused fake doctors showed their BEMS certificates, which are not recognized by the Gujarat government. He said that the state health department also confirmed that these degrees were fake.

Investigation has revealed that the gang used to identify individuals who used to work at doctor's clinics and would offer them the certificate to open their own clinics. The certificates were given for Rs 60,000 to Rs 80,000.

Initially, the interested individual would be told that he will have to undergo two-and-a-half-year training but that was only a pretense as no one ever took that training.

As a matter of fact, Singh said that certificates were issued in just 10-15 days. The mastermind of the racket, Gujarati, would print the certificate and hand over to them claiming that they were authorised to practice by the Board of Electro Homeopathic Medicine.

According to police, the Gujarati, Rawat and others were also collecting Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 annually from these fake doctors running clinics as renewal charges. Police said that in case any individual would protest, he would be threatened with being exposed to the police.