‘Doctor’ held with fake degrees, fraudulently obtained passport, IDs

‘Doctor’ held with fake degrees, fraudulently obtained passport, IDs

Ahmed.Ali@timesofindia.com 25.04.2025

Mumbai : Worli police on Wednesday arrested an orthopaedic surgeon who is attached to a few five-star hospitals in the western suburbs for allegedly practising medicine with fake degrees, endangering patients’ lives, th reatening individuals, and misusing personal documents to fraudulently obtain official IDs and a passport. Senior inspector of Worli police station Ravindra Katkar said Dr Atul Wankhede was arrested based o n a complaint filed by a food delivery boy, Avinash Suresh Saminder (24), from Chembur against the doctor’s treatment for his back pain. 

He was produced before a local court, which remanded him to judicial custody. Saminder suffered from a chro nic spine condition since 2016-17. After learning about the doctor online, he reportedly consulted him at a suburban hospital on Nov 19, 2024, for severe back pain. According to the complaint, Wankhede dismissed his pain as minor and prescribed pain killers, in addition to some exercises. 

After finding out about the fake documents, Saminder wrote to the Maharashtra Medical Council — a quasi-judicial organisation that has the power to suspend or revoke licences of allopathic doctors — to ascertain if Wankhede’s degree wa s authentic. As per the FIR, MMC officials told him that the doctor’s degree was under probe since 2015. Saminder then lodged a complaint with police.