Kerala: Man impersonating as Govt doctor arrested for treating patients for 10 days

Thiruvananthapuram: A 22-year-old youth has been arrested for allegedly posing as a registered doctor for 10 days at the Thiruvananthapuram medical college and taking a huge amount of money by scamming patients at the hospital.

The accused has been identified as Nikhil who acted as a doctor and started duping money from Rinu who was admitted to the hospital's medicine department to treat his injured leg. The accused wearing a white coat and a stethoscope went to Rinu to guide him with the test and other procedures required to finish his treatment.

By faking his identity, Nikhil managed to stay for 10 days at the hospital where he collected the blood samples from Rinu and duped him into a lump sum of money. The accused altered the blood test and informed Rinu that his leg would need a few more days to heal. As a result, he has to remain at the hospital for more days.

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TNIE reports that after convincing Rinu that his condition was serious, the accused managed to take money to buy medicines and conduct more tests on him.

In suspicion, other doctors at the hospital caught his act of posing as a fake doctor and altering the lab test and called the police immediately.

After the police arrested the accused, it was revealed in an initial investigation that Nikhil also defrauded Rinu's brother in the same way and took an amount of Rs 80,000 from him.

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Upon being viral of the incident, Health Minister Veena George took strict action by directing all the government college and hospital authorities to implement entry-point security screening as early as possible. She informed the Director of Medical Education to look after the matter and instructed all the medical colleges to take strict action to prevent these incidents in future.

As per a media report in TH, the doctors and hospital staff should be required to show their identification cards and documents before entering hospital premises, said the minister.

The Minister urged the patients and hospital staff to report any suspicious incident at the hospital and that action would be taken against it. She also ordered the hospital authorities to have only one bystander for a patient and family members will need entry passes to visit the patient.

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