Everybody knew him as Dr Shakil Ahmed until Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) yesterday found out that he did not even pass the SSC examination.
Shakil treated patients at Mohanagar Medical Services in Mohammadpur in the capital as a doctor in medicine for one year.
He was not the only fake doctor there. Another person known as Dr Atiar Rahman never studied medicine but used to treat patients.
Confessing to The Daily Star that they are not MBBS doctors, Shakil and Atiar claimed they had received paramedical training at an institution in Gabtoli in Dhaka.
Not only the doctors, nine staffs of the hospital were also fake. The staffs including male nurses and medical technicians do not have any training from any government-approved institution.
The stunning information about deception in the name of providing treatment was revealed during a six-and-a-half-hour raid by Rab-4.
The Rab personnel found at least one real doctor in the hospital — Dr Md Mohitor Rahman — who is one of the owners.
The elite force seized all the movable property of the hospital, while two fake doctors were fined Tk 2 lakh each, Mohitor Tk 3 lakh and nine staffs Tk 50,000 each.
“The people have been fined for cheating patients and unhygienic atmosphere in the hospital, while the owner is fined for cheating people with fake doctors and unskilled technicians,” said Anwar Pasha, magistrate of the Rab team.
They would have to serve three months behind bars if they failed to pay the fines.
“The hospital is being run since 2004 by 11 owners,” said Dr Mohitor claiming that experts visit the hospital in the afternoon regularly.
Acting on a tip-off, a Rab team launched the raid at 11:30am that continued till 6:00pm. During the raid Rab asked 11 patients undergoing treatment at the hospital to shift elsewhere.
Anwar Hossain, 35, a construction worker, was sitting on a chair on the ground floor of the hospital. He told The Daily Star with a sigh, “I got admitted on November 9 with problems in the spinal chord and underwent an operation on November 20.
“Earlier I used to feel pain only in my back but after the operation I cannot move my left leg easily.”
Categories: Daily Bangladesh News
