FMGs from China Bribe Medical Council Clerk to get fake MBBS Registration, all arrested
Hyderabad: In a shocking revelation, two MBBS graduates from China have been arrested by Hyderabad city police for bribing an official of the Telangana State Medical Council (TSMC) for getting a fake certificate clearing Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FMGE) and a false MBBS registration number.
Apart from the foreign medicos, the police have also arrested the senior assistant of TSMC, who allegedly took a bribe of Rs 9 lakh from each of those foreign medical graduates from China for providing registration and tampered with the Council's database.
Police have registered a case of cheating and forgery under IPC sections and under IT Act against the accused.
Medical Dialogues had recently reported that the cybercrime detectives of the Hyderabad City Police were probing a fake MBBS degree scam associated with the state medical council. The scam came to light after four doctors approached the Council for a renewal of their licenses. However, surprisingly, the Council noticed that the data provided by the doctors didn't match with the data of the medical council.
After a complaint was lodged by the TSMC registrar Dr Ch Hanumanta Rao, police started probing the issue and noted that a technical error was responsible for this mishap.
As per the latest media report by Telangana Today, Hyderabad city police have now arrested those two FMGs from China along with the TSMC senior assistant Anantha Kumar.
Police got to know about the foreign medical graduates from China after they interrogated the TSMC clerk.
Providing details about the scam, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crimes) Hyderabad AR Srinivas informed Telangana Today that those two FMGs had completed their MBBS from China back in 2012. After returning to India, they appeared in the National level Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FMGE).
Clearing the FMGE examination is a mandatory criterion for doctors who pursue their medical education from outside India, if they wish to practice in this country. Only after clearing this test, the FMGs get a registration number from the Medical Council of India (MCI), now National Medical Commission (NMC).
However, the accused medical graduates from China had failed to clear the test and after this they had approached the TSMC clerk for obtaining registration certificates, informed AR Srinivas.
The TSMC official, on the other hand, had demanded Rs 9 lakh from each of them for obtaining the certificates fraudulently and delivering the same to the FMGs.
"He collected the money from *** and *** and gave the certificates to them after forging the document with their names and downloading the same from the database," he added.
Speaking to TOI, the registrar of TSMC, Dr Rao said, "One of the clerks has done this. The suspect who graduated from China told Police that he paid Rs 9 lakh to the clerk. However, the clerk is claiming that he received only Rs 1 lakh as bribe. This is still being probed."
"When a doctor tried to renew his registration, it came light that the database was showing some other name. When I called up the graduate who returned from China, he told me that he had never registered and that he is in Delhi and not practising medicine," he added.
On the other hand, the investigations revealed that one of those doctors was working in a prominent hospital in Jubilee Hills and the other one was in the health sector.
Referring to this, Dr. Rao said, "This means without passing FMGE which is mandatory for registration and to practise in India, these two have managed to do that since 2016."
"We will come to know if there are more such cases only when doctors renew their registration," added an official of TSMC.
Recently, the Hyderabad city police have collected the details of all the fraudulent entries regarding the details of the doctors' registration in the Telangana State Medical Council (TSMC) database.
