Alert staff members of state-run JJ hospital caught a teenage boy red-handed while he was trying to fleece relatives of patients on the pretext of sending the patient's blood samples to a private lab for testing
Alert staff members of state-run JJ hospital caught a teenage boy red-handed while he was trying to fleece relatives of patients on the pretext of sending the patient's blood samples to a private lab for testing.
The boy, whose name hasn't been disclosed, was caught by a doctor at the bio-chemistry laboratory.
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One of the relatives targetted by the conman said he was ignorant about the consessional rates at which blood tests are conducted in the hospital. D.K Pandey said he was about to give the man Rs.1,200 before hospital staff intervened.
He had brought Satyaprakash, his 19-year-old brother-in-law who has been suffering from kidney problems, to JJ Hospital on Wednesday morning.
“My relative is in the Intensive Care Unit and had been told to undertake some blood tests. Later in the evening, this man started calling out Satyaprakash's name aloud and when I went to him, he said that Satyaprakash's had to undertake some more tests. Hearing this, I assumed that this man was a hospital staffer. He then asked for Rs 500 first and went away and then returned and asked for Rs 700 more. I believed him and gave him the money. After sometime, some people from the hospital came to me with this man and said that this man had been taking money from people by promising them quick blood tests for their patients. I was shocked on hearing this,” said Pandey, who is a resident of Khopar Khairne, Navi Mumbai.
This is not the first time that such a fraudster has been caught at JJ Hospital. On Wednesday, Dr VW Patil, head, department of biochemistry started questioning a suspicious looking man about patient's details whose blood samples he had come to submit in the lab. Dr Patil subsequently deduced that the man was a fraudster once he hauled the guy to patient's relatives who said that he had taken Rs 1200 from them.
The conman used to charge up to twenty times more for blood tests costing around Rs 50 in the hospital labs and pocket humungous profits.
Up to 6000 blood samples get processed in state-run JJ Hospital on a daily basis in biochemistry, pathology and microbiology departments. While 4000 samples are sent for testing from outpatient departments, up to 2000 are processed from admitted in house hospital patients.
The accused has been handed over to JJ Marg police station.
“Investigations are on. Information about what has exactly happened are being gathered. Details about the accused is not know,” said an official from JJ Marg police station.
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