Ex-registrar among 18 held in RMC scam; fake FMGE network busted

Jaipur: The state police's special operations group (SOG) Wednesday arrested 18 people, including a former registrar of the Rajasthan Medical Council (RMC), for allegedly running a racket that used forged Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) certificates to push unqualified candidates into hospitals by granting them registrations and internships across India.Additional DG, SOG, Vishal Bansal identified the key accused as former RMC registrar Dr Rajesh Sharma and former nodal officer Akhilesh Mathur, who were arrested along with 15 candidates who obtained MBBS degrees abroad but failed to clear the mandatory FMGE required to practise in India.Bansal said that a team led by DIG Paris Deshmukh and SP Kundan Kanwariya conducted raids across 22 cities and arrested the accused.Bansal said the accused used fake FMGE certificates to secure provisional registrations from the RMC and gain entry into hospitals as interns, bypassing mandatory verification checks. "The certificates were not authenticated before issuing registrations. This allowed unqualified individuals to enter the system," Bansal said.DIG Paris Deshmukh said the arrests follow an earlier breakthrough in Dec last year, when SOG exposed the racket by nabbing three fake doctors — Piyush Kumar Trivedi, Devendra Singh Gurjar and Shubham Gurjar — who used forged FMGE documents to secure internships. That probe widened into a larger network involving officials, agents and candidates.The agency has since uncovered what they describe as an organised syndicate that facilitated illegal registrations and internships through forged FMGE documents, with alleged collusion from within the council. A case was registered after evidence pointed to systemic manipulation of the registration process.The money trail has further deepened the scandal. Preliminary findings suggest each candidate paid between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 25 lakh to enter the system. Of this, around Rs 11 lakh per candidate was allegedly routed to RMC officials and staff, with the remaining amount split among middlemen and agents.The probe has revealed that one of the accused, Dr Yash Purohit, was working as a doctor in a private hospital in Udaipur using a fake certificate. Investigators have so far identified over 90 such doctors who may have slipped through using forged documents, raising serious concerns about patient safety.The role of previously arrested accused, including Sharma along with several agents, has also surfaced, with investigators flagging large-scale financial transactions linked to the racket.The racket first triggered official alarm in Oct 2024, when the medical and health department constituted a five-member inquiry committee following allegations of fake registrations. Based on its interim findings, Dr Sharma was suspended after procedural lapses and irregularities were flagged in the issuance of licences. With Sharma's arrest, investigators say the probe is expanding rapidly, with more arrests likely as authorities race to identify the full extent of the network and those who enabled it.