How hospital with fake doctors thrived in the heart of Delhi

On a balmy November afternoon, the lane in Greater Kailash’s E block is like any other in the upscale south Delhi neighbourhood — a row of three-storey homes with manicured terrace gardens, most with tall gates guarded by bored watchmen, parked SUVs, and a row of Ashoka trees. In the centre, not out of place, is a building with a sandstone facade, with a board that says “Agarwal Medical Centre”. Two smaller signs, their red fading into the background, proclaims its credentials. One says, “Super Specialty”. The other, “Government Approved”.

- Hemani Bhandari

CRUELTY IN THE NAME OF CARE - SKELETONS TUMBLE OUT

But inside the wooden doors, past the air conditioning units that jut out of the structure, is the dark underbelly of a hospital that was anything but. There are 10 beds, next to them are rusty old stretchers, bloodstained patient gowns, and expired bottles of blood samples that never made it to a pathology lab.

On November 14, teams of the Delhi Police descended on the Greater Kailash lane, locked the centre, and arrested four people — the proprietor Dr Neeraj Agarwal who trained in general medicine but carried out one illegal operation after another, his wife Pooja Agarwal, and Mahender Singh, both Class 12 graduates who also conducted surgeries, and Dr Jaspreet Singh, the only man at the centre qualified to operate, who prepared fake post-operation notes instead.

In the two weeks since, the scale of the alleged medical malpractice has grown. Police are now investigating at least 17 complaints against the centre and Agarwal, of which in at least 15, people have died. As they sift through a mound of documents — complaints, post-mortem reports and post-surgery notes — a machiavellian pattern has now emerged; of a hospital that preyed on patients from lower-middle-class backgrounds and operated on them dangerously, lured by a combination of cheap prices and the credibility that came from being located in a South Delhi neighbourhood.

This combination was important, for not only did it pull the correct patient profile in, it kept the influential who were likely to complain out. “Nobody rich ever went to the hospital because it clearly catered to the poor. If a patient from that strata ever did walk in, they would promptly walk out because it was so dirty,” one Delhi Police official said.