Police seal fake pathological lab, owner arrested

A pathological lab operating near AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital, which had allegedly been cheating people by providing them with fake reports, forging the signature of a well-known pathologist, has been sealed and its owner arrested, police said on Tuesday.

The police have seized thousands of fake test reports from the private lab — owned by one Mohammed Nasim (40), who has been arrested, said a senior police official.

During interrogation, it has emerged that Nasim used to work for a private pathological laboratory earlier and knew the basic format of all possible kind of test reports. All he needed to do was ‘filling in the gaps’, said the senior official.

This incident had rung alarm bells and the police are soon going to launch a massive drive against such fake labs operating in the national capital, said the senior official.

The laboratory located at south Delhi’s Yusuf Sarai area—a hub of pathological laboratories in the city — had been operating for around the past seven years. It was raided and sealed on Monday after receiving a complaint from the pathologist whose signature the lab allegedly used to forge, said the official.

The laboratory did not even have the basic equipment for testing blood groups, let alone other complicated tests.

However, in their list, they claimed to have every facility and provided imaginary reports for these same, said the official.

The fake laboratory came to light when the pathologist, Dr Anu Kundra, whose signature the accused used to forge, noticed her signature in laboratory reports and sent an employee there for a blood test.

The laboratory failed to ascertain even the blood group of the person, Kundra told the police. In her complaint to the police Kundra also mentioned that she used to work at a private laboratory in Kalindi Kunj area around three years ago and the concerned fake laboratory claimed to be a unit of the former.