Kolkata: In a massive development, probe into the alleged fake doctor racket in West Bengal by the state CID and West Bengal Medical Council (WBMC) has revealed that CPI (M) state secretary Dr. Surya Kanta Mishra never registered with WBMC.
Speaking to News18, Nirmal Maji, chairman of the West Bengal Medical Council, said, “While screening the number of registered doctors with WBMC, we found that CPI (M) leader Dr. Surya Kanta Mishra never registered with the council. As per rule, it is mandatory for every qualified doctor to compete their registration process with us. He is said to have done his MBBS from Odisha. We will seek an explanation from him on why he never registered with WBMC.” Dr. Mishra claims to have done his MBBS from SCB Medical College in Cuttack in 1971 and DTCD Diploma in Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases from SCB Medical College in 1974.
He joined CPI (M) in 1973 and became party MLA in 1991. He became the minister (during Left Front government) in 2006 and Leader of the Opposition since 2011. In 2012, he was appointed CPI (M) Polit Bureau member and since 2015 he has been the CPI (M) West Bengal unit secretary.
Repeated attempts to contact the CPI(M) leader yielded no result.
Meanwhile, the WBMC, on Friday, provided names of 25 more doctors with fake degrees to the state CID.
The lid on the racket came off when a man, identified as Kaiser Alam from North Bengal, was arrested in May. He used to work as an RMO at Kolkata’s Ruby General Hospital since 2015. Days later, one more person identified as Ramesh Chandra Baidya was arrested for selling fake medical degrees. During interrogatio,n he confessed to selling more than 500 fake degrees for lakhs of rupees.
Soon, more doctors fell into the police net, with many of them attached to some of the well hospitals in the city including Kothari Medical, Belle Vue Clinic, Ruby General Hospital, Kalpana Women and Child Care, ILS Hospital etc.
The others arrested so far have been identified as Subhendu Bhattacharya (who recently got an award from President Pranab Mukherjee and is the owner of a private nursing home known as Kalpana Women and Child Care in Howrah), Naren Pandey who is attached to Belle Vue Clinic, Ajay Tewary (his prescription letterhead reads ‘consultant gastroenterologist’ and he was attached with Kothari Medical Centre and ILS Hospital, Dum Dum), Ram Shankar Singh (has a private chamber in Howrah), and Khusinath Haldar (employed in Madarihat block primary health center in Alipurduar in North Bengal).