Gujarat homeopath pays Rs 16 lakh for MBBS seat, gets ‘degree’ in a month

AHMEDABAD: Even as the uproar over the alleged irregularities in NEET for admissions to MBBS courses continues, a shocking case of medical education fraud has come from Mehsana in north Gujarat.A homeopath paid Rs 16.32 lakh for admission to an MBBS course from a UP university and received his degree and certificates within a month of making full payment, without attending a single class or taking any exam.
Realising it was a forged degree, he approached police in 2019. However, the FIR was registered only on June 14, after almost five years.
In July 2018, Suresh Patel (41) was surfing on the internet about higher education in medicine, when he came across a website offering an MBBS degree through a forum called All India Alternative Medical Council, and phoned the contact person, Dr Prem Kumar Rajput.
"Rajput assured me that I would get an MBBS degree based on my class 12 marks. I was sceptical...but he assured me that everything would be legal," Patel told TOI.
Rajput told Patel that he would undergo internships, take exams and get the degree in five years.
Patel decided to go ahead and paid Rs 50,000, after which he got the admission letter from Bundelkhand University in Jhansi.
"Rajput spoke to me about 25 times. He told me that three others - Dr Sauket Khan, Dr Anand Kumar and Arun Kumar - would help me complete the MBBS course. On his instructions, I paid Rs 16.32 lakh between July 10, 2018, and Feb 23, 2019, and began waiting for my classes to start," said Patel.
However, the classes never started. "In March 2019, I received a package via courier that contained the MBBS marksheets, a degree certificate, internship training certificates and a registration certificate in my name, all bearing the stamp of the Medical Council of India (MCI)," he said.
Patel approached the MCI and learned he had been taken for a royal ride. He filed a complaint with police, which was later handed over the probe to Ahmedabad crime branch in 2019.
"In 2019, I accompanied a Mehsana police team to Delhi where Dr Anand Kumar supposedly lived and ran the organisation, but there was no one at his address. We later went to the branch of a private bank Delhi and gathered ample evidence that many others had also been cheated by the accused," he added. The probe went cold hereon and the accused were never traced. Meanwhile, Patel collected more evidence and in Dec 2023 filed a complaint with the Mehsana SP's office.