E-Paper
Ludhiana: Kunal Pal Hospital owner booked for issuing fake medical certificates
Accused Rajinder asserted that he was innocent and would appeal against the FIR; he alleged that the complainant had tried to blackmail him and when he refused to give him money, he filed a complaint with a doctored video
The Model Town police have registered a first-information report (FIR) against the owner of Kunal Pal Hospital for allegedly issuing fake medical certificates in exchange for money.
Rajinder Mani Pal, the owner of the hospital located at Model Town extension, was caught on the camera in a sting operation by a local. The investigations have found that Rajinder does not have a medical degree, and was issuing the certificates by forging signatures of another doctor who was not even employed at the hospital.
The accused is only a matriculate, or Class 10 pass out. The FIR has been lodged after the civil surgeon moved a complaint to the commissioner of police after conducting an inquiry.
Accused Rajinder asserted that he was innocent and would appeal against the FIR. He alleged that the complainant had tried to blackmail him and when he refused to give him money, he filed a complaint with a doctored video.
He claimed that the inquiry conducted by the health department was “one-sided”.
According to the complaint, Gurjeet Singh of Hawas village, he conducted a sting operation on August 20 last year. The owner was caught on camera posing as a doctor and issuing a certificate in the name of another doctor.
Singh asked the owner that he had to appear in a Bihar court and wanted a fake health certificate to prove that he was not fit to travel. The accused charged ₹10,000 for the certificate in back-date and prepared it by attaching someone else’s reports.
Singh said that he found out through others that this hospital was making fake certificates and decided to expose it. Later, he approached the civil surgeon’s office and submitted the video with a complaint.
The civil surgeon had formed a three-member committee to investigate the matter. The panel found that the doctor, in whose name the certificate was issued, did not work at the hospital and the owner had impersonated the doctor.
When the inquiry team approached the doctor whose name was used to make the certificate, he said that he had not even heard of the hospital in question.
Civil surgeon Dr Jasbir Singh Aulakh said that the said person was running the hospital without a license and used to rope in doctors on an ad hoc basis.
He said that the doctor whose name was used was a surgeon working at the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital (DMCH).
Assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Ravinder Kumar, who is investigating the case, said that an FIR under sections 192 (fabricating false evidence), 193 (false evidence), 197 (prosecution of Judges and public servants), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 34 of National Medical Commission Act has been lodged against the accused. A hunt is on for his arrest.
The ASI added that the accused might have issued such certificates to other people who had misused them. The police will try to trace all such fake certificates, he said.