Fourth ‘fake’ doctor arrested in a month

Kolkata: The state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Saturday questioned the CEO of a leading private hospital at Minto Park in connection with the arrest of a fake doctor associated with the hospital on Friday night.

Naren Pandey, who passed himself off as an allergy specialist for 13 years and even had a chamber allotted to him at the OPD of the hospital, was arrested from a diagnostic centre in Entally.

A CID team on Saturday reached the private hospital and questioned its CEO for more than two hours and recorded his statement. “Mr Pandey has been working as a doctor of asthma in the hospital since May 2004. The interview board that recruited him had the presence of the CEO and also his appointment documents bear the signature of the latter,” an investigating officer said, adding that they had posed as patients to effect the arrest of Mr Pandey. The sleuths will question some more officials of the private hospital in connection with their probe. The accused was produced at the Bidhannagar Court on Saturday and was remanded to nine days of CID custody.

The accused claimed to have procured his degree from China but couldn’t produce a genuine certificate. In his social networking site profile, he claims that he had studied at Xinjiang Medical University.

Mr Pandey is the fourth fake doctor to be arrested in the state this month. A fortnight ago, CID had arrested three fake doctors in north Bengal, one of who, Kaiser Alam,  was RMO at a leading private hospital at Kasba.