New Delhi: Deploying their agents at prestigious hospitals like AIIMS, Ganga Ram and Max among others, a gang of semi-illiterate men swindled families of patients suffering from terminal illnesses such as cancer and HIV AIDS, on the pretext of curing these incurable diseases.
Three members of the gang on Thursday landed in the police net during a raid at a shop in central Delhi's Vardhman Plaza. The accused were identified as Mujamil (34), Ravi Yallappa Shatty (38) and Manoj Govind Shirke (32), all residents of Karnataka's Belgaum district.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Mandeep Singh Randhawa said the case came to light when one Lalit Mandal reported that his one-year-old son Shivam, who has jaundice since birth, was cheated by the accused. Mandal said Shivan had been undergoing treatment at a Delhi-based hospital but to little avail. On August 27, one of the accused agents met Mandal and told that Shivam could be cured through Ayurveda.
"The accused took him to a shop where three persons were sitting. One of them, claiming to be a doctor, checked his son in a hurry and gave some 'Bhasm' (powder-like substance) in a steel box and said that the medicine should be given to the boy for four months and he will be completely cured," said the DCP.
The accused demanded Rs 65,000 for the medicine, and Mandal gave him Rs 30,000 in cash and a cheque for Rs 35,000.
When Mandal narrated the incident to his wife, she became suspicious over the medicine's cost and the period of treatment. Fearing they have been cheated, the family filed a police complaint.
Explaining the modus operandi, a senior officer told Millennium Post that apart from Delhi, the gang hoodwinked people in cities including Surat, Vadodara, Pune and Indore. In Delhi, the group deployed various agents at prestigious hospitals and places of religious importance to lure gullible people, whose relative or family members were suffering from incurable disease.
The agents used to bring the patients and their relatives to their clinic or shop, and cheat them to thousands or lakhs of rupees, depending upon the economic condition of the victim, by giving them adulterated medicines for a minimum period of four months.