The Ahmedabad City Police Crime Branch (DCB) on Tuesday arrested five more people in the Khyati Hospital-PMJAY case, in which two beneficiaries of the central government scheme died after allegedly undergoing unnecessary angioplasty surgeries earlier this month.
The latest arrests include hospital director Chirag Rajput, CEO Rahul Jain and three members of the hospital’s marketing team Milind Patel, Pratik Bhatt and Pankil Patel.
Rajput was the face of the hospital right after the two deaths, seen answering media questions, before he absconded on November 13. fir The case was filed.
With Tuesday’s developments the number of arrests in the case has increased to six. Earlier, visiting cardiologist Dr. Prashant Vazirani was arrested in the case. He was sent to judicial custody on Monday.
CEO Jain was arrested from Udaipur. RajasthanThe remaining four accused were caught from a farmhouse located in Kapadvanj in Kheda district of Gujarat. The farmhouse is owned by a friend of Rajput.
Meanwhile, three directors of Ahmedabad Bariatrics and Cosmetics Pvt Ltd – Chairman Kartik Jasu Patel, who is not in India, Rajshree Pradeep Kothari and Dr Sanjay Mulji Patolia – remained beyond the reach of the police. All three, including Rajput, were named in the FIR.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Joint Commissioner of Police (JCP), Crime, Sharad Singhal said, “Milind Patel, Prateek Bhatt and Pankil Patel were part of the marketing team of Khyati Hospital, which organized free medical camps in villages and people Assured that he would have to go to Ahmedabad hospital for heart surgery. Apart from visiting doctors and hospitals in rural areas, they will also contact village sarpanches to conduct these camps and ask them to refer patients to Khyati Hospital in exchange for commission.”
Two people from Borisana village of Kadi in Mehsana district died after undergoing angioplasty procedure at Khyati Hospital on November 11.
The senior official said that the hospital earned a total of Rs 11 crore in the last one and a half year, with 70% of the hospital’s earnings coming from the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY).
When asked why it took almost two weeks for the police to nab these accused, JCP Singhal said, “The accused were using Chinese and Russian mobile applications to communicate with each other. There was no SIM card in his phone either. To connect through these apps, they used only dongle and WiFi. However, with the help of the cyber crime team, we managed to trace them despite difficulties.