11 June,2014 05:31 AM IST | | Niranjan Medhekar
Scanned documents of 850 medical practitioners after receiving complaints from slum pockets about bogus doctors
The Pune Municipal Corporation headquarters in Shivajinagar
In an initiative that is a first of its kind, the PMC health department has been carrying out a survey to crack the whip on bogus medical practitioners in the city.
The Pune Municipal Corporation headquarters in Shivajinagar. File Pic
Till date, the corporation has apprehended seven such bogus doctors. They have drawn up a list of another 10 fake doctors, and are going to take action against them soon.
"After receiving several complaints from the slum pockets, we started a survey in January 2014. Till now, we have scanned documents of 850 medical practitioners.
Of these, we found seven practitioners who had forged documents or were practicing allopathy, while holding certificates for natureopathy or acupuncture," said Sanjeev Wavre, acting assistant health chief of PMC.
The health department has registered police complaints against all of them under Section 33 of the Maharashtra Medical Practitioners Act (MMPA).
The accused have been identified are Kishor Shahane, Sushma Kothari, Dhansingh Chaudhari, Saroj Punawasiram, Shankar Thakur, Parmeshwar Dande and Gajanan Tupe.
"All the accused have been practicing medicine illegally out of small clinics, for the past two to three years. About
10 more such quacks disappeared after our team inspected their clinics and asked them to produce their degree and
registration certificates," Wavre said.
Out of those caught by the health department, Saroj Punawasiram had even placed a board outside his clinic, boasting of a MBBS-DGO.
However, in reality, he only holds a BSc degree. Shankar Thakur and Parmeshwar Dande, who have only passed their HSC exams, duped patients by claiming to be MBBS doctors.
