Cops bust homeopathy racket, arrest 5 quacks

CHENNAI: Police in the city on Saturday said they had busted a certificate counterfeiting racket by former members of the

Tamil Nadu Homeopathy Medical Council

with the arrest of six fake

homeopathy

practitioners across Tamil Nadu over the past week.

Police said they first arrested N Balakrishnan, 52, of Ammanpettai village near Thanjavur, on August 21 on complaints by Tamil Nadu Homeopathy Medical Council (

TNHMC

) registrar G Rajasekaran and the council’s former president, R Gnanasambandam.

Police on Saturday arrested five others accused in the case, M Velmurugan, 53, of Cuddalore district, J Anilkumar, 51, of Theni district, S Kumar, 68, of Madurai district, N Ravikumar, 50, of Coimbatore district, and S Sridharan, 39, of Tirupur district.

A sixth accused, Purshothaman, 56, of Villipuram district, died of an ailment a few months ago, an investigating officer said. Four other imposters who faced similar charges obtained anticipatory bail from the Madras high court, he said.

“TNHMC registrar Rajasekaran had lodged a complaint against homeopathy practitioners who received fake medical certificates from the council’s former registrar, C Soundararajan, in collusion with its former president, G P Hahnemann, and former council members R Rangasamy and T Parameshwaran Nambiar,” the officer said.“Rajasekaran said the former TNHMC members had issued the fake certificates between 2010 and 2012 in the names of deceased homeopathy doctors,” he said.

The anti-forgery wing of the Central Crime Branch (CCB), Chennai police, charged the fake doctors under IPC Sections 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using a forged document as genuine), 420 (cheating) read with Section 34 (criminal conspiracy).

A special CCB court in Chennai on Saturday remanded the five accused in Puzhal Central Prison.

Former TNHMC president Gnanasambandam first raised the issue by filing a petition in the Madras high court. The court directed the CCB to probe the matter but a police team closed the case in December 2014.

Gnanasambandam then returned to the court with records he obtained through the RTI Act. A short while later, TNHMC) registrar G Rajasekaran filed a police complaint, levelling allegations against the former council members identical to Gnanasambandam’s charges.

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