Nearly 18 months after the Registrar of the Tamil Nadu Homeopathy Medical Council (TNHMC) had lodged a complaint of a major scam involving previous office- bearers, the Central Crime Branch (CCB) has registered an FIR against the council’s former registrar and former president for allegedly issuing fake certificates to several people.
In March 2016, the TNHMC’s Registrar Rajasekaran sent a letter to the City Police Commissioner requesting him to initiate criminal action against the delinquent officers. In the letter, he had stated that bogus certificates had been issued by former registrar C. Soundarajan when G.P. Hahnemann was president, with the connivance of some former council members. The complaint was not registered and had been kept pending since then.
RTI Act
]n the meantime, R. Gnanasambandam, council’s former president had taken the matter to the Madras High Court which had directed the CCB to register the case if any prima facie case was made out. However, the Inspector, Central Crime Branch, Forgery Wing Team-V, had closed the case in December 2014 without making any enquires whatsoever and without verifying the records, Mr. Gnanasambandam claimed, on the basis of replies obtained under the Right to Information(RTI) Act.
Since the CCB had not registered the case, he had filed a yet another petition seeking the court to register the case. The petition was still pending before the court. Under these circumstances, the CCB has registered a case against Mr. Soundararajan, Mr. Hahnemann and former members R. Rangasamy, Parameswaran Nambiar and others.
Until two years ago, about 15,176 persons had been registered as ‘registered medical practioner’ under class ‘B’ & ‘C’ on experience basis and about 5,000 doctors had been registered in the council under class ‘A’ after passing Degree / Diploma from recognised Homoeopathy Medical Colleges in the county and practising Homoeopathy in all over Tamil Nadu. The registration of practitioners under class ‘C’ had been stopped years ago but the class ‘B’ was still in practice.
No arrests yet
In 2016, the incumbent registrar had de-registered several practitioners since most of them were either dead or not actively practising. Then there were 1261 identified as genuine practitioners under class ‘B’.
“Utilising class ‘B’ provisions, the delinquent officials have issued impersonated registration certificates to several under the name of persons who were dead. We have identified 40 persons and issued notices. Only 10 persons came forward to hand over the fake certificates while remaining persons have not done so fearing criminal action,” Mr. Rajasekaran,said .
Though the CCB had registered the criminal case, it was not clear whether they would be arrested.
