3 held for selling fake medicines to AIDS, cancer and heart patients 34 targeted in 20 days; at least two of them are kids
BUSTED Gang targeted patients in advanced stages of illness at city’s hospitals
NEW DELHI: Three men from Karnataka, who posed as doctors to target Delhi’s AIDS, cancer and heart patients and sold them fake Ayurvedic medicines worth lakhs of rupees, have been arrested, police said on Friday.
The gang allegedly employed scores of agents to look for patients (and their relatives or next of kin) in the advanced stages of illness at the city’s top hospitals and religious places, police said.
The three men were identified as Mujammil,34, Ravi Shetty, 38, and Manoj Govind Shikre,34, all natives of Belgaum in Karnataka. None of them has completed even their schooling.
After duping a large number of patients in one city, the gang would wrap up their business, go into hiding for a while and then set up shop elsewhere, Mandeep Singh Randhawa, deputy commissioner of police (central), said.
Police said the gang has been active for the last three years and has cheated people in cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Indore, Vadodara and Surat.
They set up their latest shop, Sainath Ayurvedic Bhandar, at a commercial building on Asaf Ali Road in central Delhi’s Chandni Mahal in early August, the DCP said.
Police learnt of the fraud on Wednesday after a vendor in south Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar complained of being duped of ₹65,000 by the gang that offered to cure his 18-month-old son. The toddler suffered from jaundice since birth and his parents didn’t have hopes of him recovering fully despite getting him treated at AIIMS, the DCP said.
A case based on the man’s statement was registered at Chandni Mahal police station and the shop in Chandni Mahal was searched on Thursday. Police said the shop had a separate chamber for a “doctor” and a counter for “medicines”. The “medicines” have been recovered.
“The gang sold medicines which they claimed were made from “ash” of gold, silver or diamond. We will send the seized ”medicines” for a forensic examination to determine their composition and to ascertain if these had adversely affected patients,” an investigator said.
It will also be probed if any of their victims died because of these ”medicines”, he said.
Police said Mujammil would pose as a doctor and Shikre as medicine shop owner. Shetty was in charge of managing agents who would scout for patients.
Shetty was booked for a similar crime in Hyderabad three years ago and had spent a fortnight in jail, police said.
Police said the fraudsters victimised more than 300 patients across the country. “The gang would demand anywhere between ₹60,000 and ₹3 lakh from patients with a ’guarantee of a full refund’ if the ailment was not cured,” an investigator said.
The patients would be asked to return for a checkup after five or six months, but the gang would by then wrap up their business and flee elsewhere.
The gang has been booked for offences such as cheating by impersonation, cheating and adulteration of drugs.
If convicted of cheating, they could be jailed for up to seven years. NEW DELHI: In just 20 days of its operation in Delhi, the gang of three ‘fake doctors’ arrested from central Delhi’s Chandni Mahal on Thursday had targeted 34 patients, who had advanced stages of AIDS, cancer and heart disease.
At the gang’s Chandni Mahal office, investigators found 34 receipts issued by them over the last 20 days. Only two of those receipts had details of patients — both children who are undergoing treatment at Delhi’s top hospitals.
The first is an 18-month-old child, who is suffering from jaundice since birth and was undergoing treatment at AIIMS. “His father is a street vendor in south Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar and he had spent ₹2 lakh on the child’s treatment, but with little success,” an investigator said.
An ‘agent’ of this gang spotted the boy with his parents at a religious event in Sarojini Nagar on Monday. “The boy was having an epileptic fit and his parents appeared upset. The agent took the boy’s father aside and told him that his son too had the same problem but was cured after being treated by an ‘ayurveda’ doctor in Chandni Mahal,” the officer explained.
The father paid ₹65,000 for “gold ash” that he believed would cure the boy. “The father was asked to discontinue the treatment at AIIMS and he agreed. But when his wife got to know of it, she insisted that it was a fraud and that the police be informed,” the investigator said.
That is how the gang was busted.
Police said the gang’s other victim is a seven-year-old boy who was undergoing treatment at a prominent private hospital in central Delhi. “Last week, another agent was scouting for victims at that hospital when he noticed the boy’s troubled grandfather,” the officer said.
The boy was diagnosed with a hole in his heart and his grandfather had little faith in the doctors, police said. “The grandfather is a retired government official, but his desperation led him into the trap. He took the boy out of the hospital and sought treatment from this gang,” the officer said.
Police said the gang did everything to squeeze money out of its victims and was willing to take payments in cash, cheque and even through credit cards. “One cancer patient did not have cash. They used his credit card to shop for jewellery,” the investigator said.
The gang would demand anywhere between ₹60,000 and ₹3 lakh from patients with a ’guarantee of a full refund’ if the ailment was not cured.