Rourkela: Padmanava Mukhi Karua, a 53 year old serial quack who had got engaged with Rourkela Government Hospital (RGH) through an outsourcing agency, Rahi Care Pvt Ltd, has now been arrested on charges of forgery and impersonation. Padmanava’s luck ran out as Bajaj Finance, a financial service firm, from which he had availed a personal loan of Rs 16 lakh, re-examined his documents and detected the fraud. Padmanava had managed to hoodwink the system till he missed to properly forge a document which carried the phone number of Dr Jha, the person he was impersonating. The accused had used the medical certificate, Aadhaar card and other relevant documents of Dr Jha and superimposed his photos with finesse to impersonate as the doctor. Rourkela SP Brijesh Kumar Rai said a complaint of impersonation against the fake doctor was received by the police from Bajaj Finance.
During investigation, it came to light that in 2010 Padmanava was appointed at Hi-Tech Medical College and Hospital (HTMCH) but when his identity was revealed, he fled. Rai said the 53-year-old was arrested in November, 2019 by Town police in Sundargarh for fraudulently getting posted at Hathbari primary health centre (PHC) in Nuagaon block, around 45 km from Rourkela. He served there for about three years. However, the then Sundargarh CDMO Dr SK Mishra suspected foul play and got Padmanava’s credentials verified from VIMSAR, Burla and lodged a complaint at the Town police station leading to his arrest on November 13, 2019. Meanwhile, RGH superintendent Dr Ganesh Prasad Dash said the hospital had no way to detect the impersonation as a couple of months back Padmanava had complied with the process of registration with the Odisha Council of Medical Registration.
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Mayur Agarwal, Area manager of Rahi Care Pvt Ltd said the fake doctor had sound technical knowledge and the firm came to know about him from police on Wednesday. He said Padmanava has been disengaged and a police complaint would also be lodged against him by the agency. He was drawing around Rs. 50,000 a month from the agency. Interestingly, Padmanava grew up in Rourkela and studied till Class XII in the steel city where his father served at Rourkela Steel Plant. He went to Jamshedpur where he worked with a chemist shop during which he picked the interest in medicine as well as the desire to fake a physician’s career.
