BHMS grad held for manning ICU using MBBS doctor’s credentials

A BHMS graduate was arrested for allegedly using the registration number and name of an MBBS doctor and manning the ICU at MT Agarwal Hospital. This is the third such arrest in a case registered last month against six trustees of Jeevan Jyoti Charitable Trust for allegedly recruiting unqualified and bogus doctors.

MUMBAI: A Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery (BHMS) graduate was arrested on Saturday for allegedly using the registration number and name of a MBBS doctor and manning the ICU at the MT Agarwal Hospital, according to Mulund police.

HT Image

This is the third such arrest in a case registered last month against six trustees of Jeevan Jyoti Charitable Trust for allegedly recruiting unqualified and bogus doctors to man intensive care units (ICU) of MT Agarwal Hospital.

The arrested man, Sushant Ramchandra Jadhav, 30, was using the registration number and name of a MBBS doctor, Dr Sushil Kumar Maurya, without his knowledge, said Purshottam Karad, deputy commissioner of police of the Zone 7.

Jadhav is in police custody till Tuesday. He was practicing at MT Agrawal hospital from February 2022 to August 2022 and had issued four death certificates using Dr Maurya’s name and registration number.

Jadhav studied BHMS from Satara and is currently staying in Kalyan. Dr Maurya was not aware that his name and registration number were being used in the civic hospital in Mulund, said a police officer, who is a part of the investigating team.

He added that Chandrashekhar Bhulairam Yadav was studying MBBS in China but due to the Covid-19 lockdown, had returned to Mumbai and started practicing in MT Agrawal hospital without completing his medical degree. Yadav completed his MBBS from China in June 2022 but had not registered with Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC), said Karad.

Yadav has issued 32 death certificates during his ‘practice’, added the officer.

Goldy Sharma, a social activist, found out that several doctors at the hospital’s ICU were not duly qualified and/or registered with the MMC. The case was registered based on court orders on a complaint filed by Sharma, who suspected the credibility of the doctors.

Sharma had then sought information regarding the qualifications of the doctors on duty in the ICU, and the number of deaths in the ICU between February 17, 2018, and November 22, 2018.

“I was told that 149 patients had died in the ICU of the hospital in this duration. Among the doctors that I was told were on duty, one Dr Pervez Sheikh Aziz had been booked by Malvani police in 2020 for practising on a fake MMC license and by Thane police on some other charges,” Sharma said in his statement to the police.

Sharma said that he found out that two other doctors at the ICU, Dr Avinash Prasad and Dr Rajesh did not have MMC registrations either.

The case was registered under sections 112 (Abettor when liable to cumulative punishment for act abetted and for act done), 117 (Abetting commission of offence by the public or by more than ten persons), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) 302 (punishment for murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 416 (cheat by personation), 419 (Punishment For Cheating ), 426 (Whoever commits mischief), 465 (Punishment for forgery), 471 (Whoever fraudulently or dishonestly uses as genuine any document which he knows or has reason to believe to be a forged) of the Indian Penal Code and the relevant section of Maharashtra Medical Practitioners Act.