Nepal MBBS graduate under scanner for allegedly forging documents to get job in Patna Hospital
Patna: A Nepal-based resident doctor has been booked under the charges of forgery, criminal misconduct, and cheating for practising in India without the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FMGE) certificate. The hospital authorities learned that the doctor had produced fake documents to get a state board's license and sacked him from the job before approaching the police.
The doctor has been identified as a 40-year-old MBBS graduate from Kathmandu in Nepal and he was working at Paras HMRI Hospital, a multispecialty private healthcare. To practice medicine in India, a medical student with a foreign degree must pass the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FMGE), often known as the Medical Council of India (MCI) screening test. However, the doctor failed to qualify for the test in 2012.
He allegedly produced forged documents and claimed to be registered with the Bihar Council of Medical Registration (BCMR) to become eligible for employment. He worked for a hospital in Haryana before relocating to Paras, where from December 16, 2020, until May 10, 2023, he served as a casualty medical officer before being fired, reports Hindustan Times.
The fraud came to light when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) started investigating at least 73 foreign medical graduates across India and officials of the erstwhile MCI (now the National Medical Commission) and state medical councils since December 2022. On May 12, on the instruction of the CBI, Dr Nitesh Kumar Mundle, medical superintendent, Paras HMRI Hospital, lodged an FIR against the accused at Patna's Shastrinagar police station.
According to a hospital official who spoke on the records the result of the screening test is confidential, employers rely on the registration certificate granted by the state medical council. This officer claimed that although the accused had a proper registration certificate from the BCMR, the supporting paperwork may have been falsified. Dr Sahajanand Prasad Singh, the registrar of the BCMR and former president of the National Indian Medical Association (IMA), contested this version of events. “It is not possible ... the state medical council would never issue a registration certificate to a doctor with a foreign degree if s/he had not cleared the FMGE.” “Our staff scrutinise every case minutely before we issue registration certificates to any doctor,” he said.
When told that the hospital claimed it had checked for the state medical council registration, which was available in the public domain as part of the Indian Medical Register on the NMC website, Singh said, “The doctor concerned must have registered with the MCI and got a no-objection certificate (NOC) from it. We may have issued him a registration certificate on the basis of NOC from MCI, as was the rule then. We have not committed any wrong at our end.”
Aakash Sinha, unit head of Paras HMRI Hospital, informed HT that CBI is still investigating the case and the accused will face trial at CBI Special Court. He did not elaborate, saying, “The matter is sub-judice."
