Ambulance Business Scam: Surat Doctor accused of duping 12 doctors of Rs 5.25 crore

Surat: In a fraud case, a doctor from the Surat Municipal Institute of Medical Education and Research (SMIMER) has been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Surat police for allegedly defrauding 12 doctors of Rs 5.25 crore in an ambulance scam.

According to the police, the accused doctor, a tutor at the medical college collected the money from his 12 doctor friends by luring them with a 50 per cent profit in the ambulance business but failed to deliver any promised profits.

The scam came to light when a complaint was lodged with the crime branch in May 2024 against the accused following which later an FIR was registered. According to the complainant, the doctor started two ambulance services named Sunshine Ambulance Service and Youngs Ambulance Service in 2021, operated by his associates Hemant Parmar and Mayur Goswami.

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To make the fraud believable, the accused allegedly convinced his 12 doctor friends to invest in the two ambulance services by offering them a 50% profit share. He claimed that each ambulance dispatched out of the state would earn Rs 1 lakh. Additionally, he fabricated a contract with JSW Steel and showed it to the 12 doctors claiming he had secured a deal to provide 12 ambulances to their plant, with eight already deployed, TOI reports.

After getting no profit from the business, the doctors approached the police and initiated a probe. It was found that the accused was shifting his place to avoid being caught by the police and fled to Varanasi.

The police, who were monitoring his movements managed to arrest the accused doctor on Thursday when he returned to his residence in the Vesu area of Surat to visit his mother. During interrogation, he revealed that he stayed there for 20 days after fleeing to Varanasi. He then returned to Gujarat and stayed at the Sumer Tirth Jain Dharam Shala in Karjan taluka of Vadodara before moving to the Bhaveshwar Jain Dharam Shala in Bardoli. He was produced in the court on Friday and EOW got his five-day remand.

An investigation is underway to determine the location where he stored the funds.

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