Mumbai: In a concerning breach of trust, two doctors are among four individuals who have been booked for allegedly defrauding a senior physician of ₹70 lakh under the guise of securing an MBBS admission for his daughter. The incident, which transpired between September 2020 and February 2021, involves promises of a seat in a Mumbai municipal medical college through the management quota.

The accused have been identified as Dr. Rakesh Ramnarayan Verma and Dr. Akhileshkumar Rammoorthy Pal, both of whom are employed at Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College and General Hospital in Sion. The other two individuals implicated in the case are Luv Avadhkishore Gupta and Kush Gupta. An FIR has been registered at Sion Police Station, and authorities have indicated that all four accused will soon be summoned for questioning regarding this alleged cheating case that occurred during the pandemic.

According to reports, the complainant, a 61-year-old doctor who runs a clinic in Dharavi with his wife, was seeking to secure an MBBS seat for his daughter, who had scored 60% in her Higher Secondary examinations. The family had approached several medical colleges, including LTM Medical College (Sion Medical College), JJ Hospital, DY Patil, and Vedanta Hospital in Palghar, but were unsuccessful in obtaining admission.

The case unfolded when the complainant was introduced to Dr. Pal, who initially demanded ₹1 crore for the admission during a meeting at a hotel in Sion. Subsequently, the "admission" deal was finalized at ₹70 lakh after the complainant expressed his inability to pay the initial sum and was introduced to Luv Gupta.

Following the instructions of the accused, the complainant made payments in installments at an office in Belapur, Navi Mumbai, between September 2020 and February 2021. In March 2021, the complainant received an email, later discovered to be fake, confirming his daughter's "admission" to the college. The accused even provided a forged admission letter, and the complainant's daughter began attending purported online lectures due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the situation raised suspicions when the complainant's daughter experienced dissatisfaction with the quality of online classes, where she could only hear audio and never see her teacher. Upon complaining to Dr. Mohan Joshi, the dean, the complainant was informed that his daughter had never been admitted to the college.

This is not the first time that one of the accused doctors has been implicated in подобный fraud. The suspended deputy dean of Sion Hospital has been booked in a cheating and fraud case for the sixth time. He was previously suspended in 2023 after being arrested in another medical admission scam.