JJ hospital’s honorary physician linked to jumbo Covid-19 centres scam sacked

Dr Hemant Gupta, an honorary physician at Sir JJ Group of Hospitals, has had his contract terminated after his name came up in an ongoing investigation into an alleged scam related to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's jumbo Covid-19 centres. Dr Gupta is one of the co-owners of M/s Lifeline Hospital Management Services, which secured a contract from the BMC to provide manpower at the jumbo centres. The Enforcement Directorate alleges that the company obtained the contract using forged documents and had no previous experience in providing manpower for medical facilities.

The state medical education department has terminated the contract of Dr Hemant Gupta, an honorary physician at Sir JJ Group of Hospitals, after his name cropped up in the on-going Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigation into the alleged scam related to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) jumbo Covid-19 centres, officials aware of the development said.

JJ hospital’s honorary physician linked to jumbo Covid-19 centres scam sacked

A formal order in this regard was issued on July 12.

Dr Gupta is one of the four co-owners of the Worli-based M/s Lifeline Hospital Management Services (LHMS), a firm that secured a ₹38-crore contract from the BMC to provide manpower at the jumbo centres at Dahisar and Worli. However, the ED alleged that the company bagged the contract after submitting forged and fabricated documents and had no previous experience of providing manpower for any medical facility.

The ED’s probe began after an FIR was registered against the partners at LHMS in August 2022. According to ED sources, Dr Gupta had allegedly looked after the health-technical aspects at the firm.

“With the ongoing ED investigation, the institution’s (JJ hospital’s) name was getting tarnished as he was an honorary professor. We also found that as an honorary professor, he had hardly attended national and international medical conferences or participated in academic activities. His association with the institution was not of much benefit to the purpose for which he was awarded the honorary post. We therefore decided to terminate the contract,” an official from the medical education department said.

HT had on June 30 reported on how a senior administrator at JJ hospital found that Dr Gupta did not sit in the medicine department but pharmacology department where 14 non-hospital staff were found to be conducting clinical drug trials.

The dean of the hospital on June 21 set up a five-member committee headed by Dr Ameeta Joshi, head of the microbiology department, to investigate the role of a private firm - Parshwa Life Sciences (PLS) - and Dr Hemant Gupta in the clinical drug trials.

The committee in its preliminary report, which was submitted to the Directorate of Medical Education and Research on July 11, said that the principal investigators had not followed due diligence and many were not even aware of the trials done by them. It also found that the ex-dean Dr Mukund Tayade had arbitrarily fixed the rent amount of three rooms given to PLS for ₹2 lakh per year without following the government-defined commercial renting rate, which is ₹150 per square feet a month.

“The committed also found that the coordinator mentioned in the MoU signed by Dr Tayade with PLS had not done his job and had no idea about the 14 non-JJ hospital staff working in the pharmacology department even though he was the former head of the department. However, the preliminary report has no mention of Dr Gupta and his role in the clinical trials,” a senior official at the hospital said.

“We are expecting strict actions against the coordinator, who also happens to be the former medical superintendent of ST George hospital and is presently working at JJ hospital’s pharmacology department. A decision on him and other doctors will be taken soon. So far, 28 doctors have been questioned by the committee,” the official added.

Sources in the hospital said it is a matter of investigation if apart from Dr Gupta, PLS and LHMS were linked to each other.