Net of medical cheats spread wider than earlier expected

New Delhi: Two days after a gang was busted for cheating people in the name of curing terminal diseases in central Delhi, the city police had received several phone calls from the gang's victims after the matter came into light.

Police officials claimed that one particular complaint pertained to the gang offering treatment for skin diseases.

Moreover, cops have found that a similar case with an identical modus operandi took place last year in Lajpat Nagar, and on Sunday detained a man for questioning in the same.

According to investigators, after reading about the arrests of the accused, another male victim of the central Delhi case approached cops and said that the gang had cheated him by claiming to cure skin disease.

"So far, we have received phone calls of over 10 victims who were duped by the gang," said an investigator.

He added that the accused used to send 'bhasam' to their victims, claiming that it was medicine, which has been recovered from the accused and sent for forensic testing.

Cops also found that the criminals had not given proper documents for setting up their shop at Asaf Ali Road in central Delhi.

Meanwhile, talking about the Lajpat Nagar cheating case in December 2017, cops said that one of the victims had visited a central government hospital with his mother, who was suffering from a knee ailment.

Near the hospital's OPD, the mother-son duo met a person claiming that his sister can alleviate the pain with her medicine.

"The accused told the victim that his mother was also suffering from the same pain and after the Ayurvedic treatment, she was cured," said the police official.

Later, the victim visited the clinic to meet the sister of the accused, where a person claiming to be a doctor and gave him some 'bhasam' for some thousand rupees.

Later, the victim found that he was cheated after he met another person who was duped on the pretext of having a bone disease cured.

The man detained in this case also belongs to the Karnataka, just like the accused in the central Delhi case.