Authorities of Ruby Hall Clinic, a prominent city hospital, have submitted an application with the Pune police saying that an unidentified person posing as a hospital staffer is making calls to patients’ relatives and looting them on the pretext of payment for medical examination and treatment.
Interestingly, such incidents have been reported at the hospital since June. Yet, the hospital authorities, the Pune crime branch and the Koregaon Park police have failed to nab the culprit so far.
Hospital authorities are aware that the culprit has information about the patients.
According to the hospital authorities, an unidentified person is digging out information of patients who have been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) or patients with serious illness. The culprit then would call up the patients’ relatives and ask for money for medial treatment. He would give a bank account number and ask them to deposit the money in that account.
In June, relatives of patients admitted to Ruby Hall Clinic and KEM Hospital were duped by a conman who called them up posing as a junior doctor and asked them to deposit money in a bank account for purchase of a life-saving injection, claiming that their patients were sinking. dna had reported this in its June 1 edition.
The relatives, who were scared, deposited the money only to realise later that they had been duped.
Ruby Hall Clinic’s chief security officer Lt Col (retd) Satishkumar Bhatia told dna, “A man, who identified himself as Ramdas Gowale this time, called up the relatives of a patient who has been admitted in the ICU on October 24 and demanded Rs50,000 from them. He also called up the relatives of a heart patient and demanded Rs22,000. To make matters worse, he demanded money from a third patient’s relatives on November 2. Following which, we have given an application in this regard to the Pune crime branch.”
A senior crime branch officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told dna, “Prima facie, we have come across two possibilities: One is that someone might have given a contract to local goons to extort the money. Second is that someone is deliberately trying to malign the hospital’s image. We will nab the caller and his associates soon.”
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