How fake doctors continue to kill and maim people with impunity

Four people were arrested this week by the Delhi Police, including two 'doctors' who were allegedly performing surgeries on people without holding the requisite qualifications. The group operated their setup from a nursing home in Delhi's Greater Kailash locality and lured people with lower surgery rates.The police received a complaint last October from a woman who alleged that she had taken her husband to the Agarwal Medical Centre for gallbladder stone removal. "Before commencement of surgery, the hospital director Niraj Agarwal said that the surgery would be conducted by a famous surgeon named Dr Jaspreet Singh. Just before the surgery, Dr Agarwal claimed that Dr Jaspreet could not come due to some urgency and a Dr Mahender Singh would conduct the surgery," the police were told by the woman.The complainant said that later she came to know that Mahender and Pooja were not doctors. Mahender was, in fact, a lab technician, while Pooja earlier worked as an assistant at the centre.After the operation, which took place in September 2022, her husband complained of severe pain and was rushed to Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital where he was declared brought dead. During their probe, investigators also found that seven complaints had been filed with the Delhi Medical Council against the Agarwal Medical Centre, Niraj Agarwal and his wife, Pooja, since 2016 by the kin of patients who had allegedly died due to medical negligence.Meanwhile, on October 27 this year, another patient was operated at the same centre for removal of gallbladder stone and died of complications. Another FIR was registered .Rajpal Singh, municipal councillor of Delhi's Sriniwaspuri ward, said his uncle's son, Jai Narayan, 42, was admitted to Agarwal Medical Centre on October 26 for the stone removal surgery. The following day Narayan was taken away for surgery but declared dead sometime later. "Strangely, he was taken for the surgery in the clothes he was wearing at the time," said Singh. "They came and informed us that Narayan had a cardiac arrest and died. We did not believe them and informed the cops. His post-mortem was conducted at AIIMS by a panel of doctors who opined that he died due to excessive bleeding."Read more details here Maimed for lifeIncidents like these are not unusual – and it's not just bigger cities where it's taking place. In semi-urban and rural areas, where there are huge gaps in health infrastructure, the situation is as worrying, if not more.Fishmonger Leela Khatkekar, 43, a resident of Vasai near Mumbai, for one, cannot understand how a doctor she trusted with her life could leave her maimed. There are at least five families in and around Murbad, 105km from Mumbai, who have the same question to ask but of a different doctor.While Khatkekar has been left bedridden after a surgery carried out for hip pain by a suspected fake doctor, at least five people have lost their lives in Murbad after being treated for simple fever and body ache by another quack.Pandurang Gholap, 71, who people in Murbad’s Dhasai village referred to as Doctor Pandu, and Dr Hemant Sonwane, 51, who, police believe, has operated upon at least 40 people, were arrested in January 2022. medium nocaption89504791A third fake doctor, identified by the police as Sunil Wadkar, 44, was arrested in December 2021.Wadkar was the chief medical officer at Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation between 2009 and 2014 and set up a private hospital post-retirement.According to the Indian Medical Association (IMA) there are at least 10 lakh quacks practicing in India, endangering millions of lives. According to IMA’s Anti-Quackery Cell these are mostly people who have assisted doctors or worked in hospitals and clinics in some capacity and picked up rudimentary knowledge of medicine. According to Avinash Bhondwe, a former IMA president (2019-20), just the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) has over a thousand fake doctors. “Our estimate is Maharashtra has over 15,000 quacks,” he said. medium nocaption89504828Of the 10 lakh quacks, IMA believes 4 lakh are practitioners of Indian medicine systems like Ayurvedic, Sidha, Tibb and Unani. The IMA’s definition of a quack is a ‘doctor’ who is not registered with any medical council, including IMA.World Health Organisation (WHO) numbers are more shocking. According to WHO numbers from a 2016 report quoted in FAQs released by the ministry of health and family welfare in August 2019, 57.3% of personnel practicing allopathic medicine (in 2016) did not have a medical qualification. The report said of all the allopathic practitioners, as many as 31.4 % were educated only up to secondary school.According to IMA, the number of fake doctors rose dramatically during the first and second Covid waves when hundreds of qualified doctors either shut their clinics because they feared getting infected or were asked to stop practicing because they were in the vulnerable age category.It was just body ache and feverOn January 24, 2022, around 11 am, daily wage labourer Ram Asawale, 55, in village Dhasai in Murbad district of Maharashtra, complained of body ache and fever. Later in the day, his daughter, 22-year-old Alka Mukane too fell ill and had the same symptoms.Both went to Pandurang Gholap’s clinic, who everybody in the village knew as Doctor Pandu, who had set up his practice in the village 12 years ago after retiring from a primary health centre (PHC).Everybody in the village had watched Dr Pandu at the PHC assisting the doctors and even prescribing medicines in the absence of doctors. Nobody knew that Dr Pandu was employed as a security guard at the PHC. He had studied only up to class X. medium nocaption89504880So, when Dr Pandu opened his clinic in the village, everybody saw it as continuation of his work at the health centre. He would prescribe medicines for everything from minor aches and fever to diarrhea, epileptic attacks and cardiac distress.That morning, Dr Pandu examined both of them and administered two injections each and then gave them a packet of 10-15 tablets with instructions on when which tablet was to be taken in the next 48 hours. He charged Asawale and his daughter Rs 250 each.By the next day, Asawale and Alka’s condition had worsened. Their legs were swollen up like balloons and they had rashes all over their bodies. When they visited Dr Pandu, he assured them it was a passing reaction to one of the medicines he had prescribed and gave them an ointment for applying on the rashes.That night, Asawale died and Alka’s husband rushed her to Tokawade central health centre, where he was told she would have to be moved to hospital where she could be put on a ventilator. She was then taken to a government-run hospital in Ulhasnagar. But it was too late. Alka, who got married just six months ago, was declared “brought dead”. medium89505091Alka’s husband approached the Tokawade taluka police station and lodged a complaint. Dr Pandu was arrested on January 27. The police have now received more complaints against Dr Pandu involving at least six deaths.Fake doctors kill millions every yearAccording to a 2018 Sample Registration System (SRS) report from the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, 19.2% of all deaths during treatment in India had a fake doctor’s involvement, with a rural/urban break up of 23.1% and 8.7%. medium89504996This essentially means that these patients were at some point treated by a fake doctor. They were brought to a qualified doctor only after their condition worsened irretrievably.The highest percentage of such deaths was reported in Odisha in 2018 at 38.6%, with a rural/urban break-up of 38.6% and 25.6%.The second-worst state was Jharkhand with the percentage of deaths caused by handling by an “untrained functionaries” at 34.1%, with a rural/urban break-up of 38.6% and 5.8%. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r Orthopaedic surgeon who is BSc, ElectronicsLeela Khatkekar, who sold fish to make a living, suffered from hip pain and was advised a joint replacement surgery. It was going to put the family back by Rs 6 lakh, way beyond their means.In November 2019, somebody told her about a certain Dr Patil. People also knew him as Dr Hemant Sonawane. She met him on December 14, 2021, and was told she did not require a joint replacement surgery.He said the surgery he will perform will rid her of the pain within 48 hours of the procedure and it will cost just Rs 2.5 lakh.On December 19, Khatkekar was admitted to Sai Hospital in Vasai-east, where Dr Sonawane was registered as a visiting doctor. She was operated upon the same day and discharged on December 29.Khatkekar has been bedridden ever since. The surgery was botched up so badly that her wounds bled even when this TOI+ team visited her at home last year.While Dr Sonawane initially advised her to be patient and said the recovery sometimes takes longer, later on he blocked her number. When her husband approached Sai Hospital, he was told Dr Sonawane no longer practiced there. “It was only when we got the news of his arrest that we filed a police complaint,” she said.When Khatekar approached Kokilaben hospital in Andheri, Mumbai, doctors could not understand what procedure Dr Sonawane had carried out on her. They said a corrective surgery will cost Rs 6 lakh.The police later found out is that Sonawane only assisted an orthopaedic surgeon in Baroda between 1993 and 1996. He later worked with an orthopaedic implants manufacturer till 2005 in Pune.“I used to be in some amount of pain before the surgery, but I used to work. Now I am bedridden. I cannot understand how a doctor could do this to me. We consider doctors only second to God,” she said. medium nocaption89504737This story was first published in February 22. It has been updated with recent incidents