Five ‘doctors’ practise sans valid degrees, arrested

Mumbai Police crime branch conducted raids at five places across the western suburbs on Friday and arrested five people for allegedly practicing medicine and running

Mumbai Police crime branch conducted raids at five places across the western suburbs on Friday and arrested five people for allegedly practicing medicine and running dispensaries without valid degrees.

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All the accused were operating the clinics without proper medical knowledge, said the police.

“Before conducting the raids, we had sent our informers as patients to these clinics to verify if the information we had received about doctors operating without valid degrees is true. After getting a confirmation from them, we conducted raids and arrested the five accused,” said Akbar Pathan, deputy commissioner of police (crime branch).

Two of the accused — Ramkumar Mishra, 52; and Swapankumar Mandal, 49 — operated their clinics in Vile Parle (West), while the third accused, 32-year-old Hanif Agharia, ran a clinic at Patel compound in Versova. The Oshiwara police has registered a case against him. Two other accused — Tukaram Bhiva Thorat, 52; and Aziz Shaikh, 42 — were nabbed from their clinics in Malwani area of Malad (West). While Thorat used to run the ‘Sheetal Clinic’, Shaikh had named his dispensary as ‘Mother and Childcare Clinic’.

The five have been arrested under sections 419 (Punishment for cheating by personation) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing the delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code, and relevant sections of the Maharashtra Medical Practitioners Act.

In the past three months, 14 bogus doctors were arrested from across the city for practising without valid licences.