Bribes, fake degrees: Anatomy of a pharmacy racket

Madan Mandal, 45, was on the hunt for what he called a "respectable job." A resident of Shahbad Dairy in northwest Delhi, he wanted to start his own shop, and felt that operating a pharmacy was a decent option.

- Hemani Bhandari

NEW DELHI:

There was just one problem — Mandal hadn't even matriculated from school, let alone earned a pharmacy diploma, which made getting a pharmacy registration certificate — mandatory to operate a chemist shop — impossible.

Well, nearly impossible.

Mandal chose to get his registration through another route — he paid a tout ₹4 lakh for a "package deal." Within days, he received fake matriculation and diploma certificates. Two and a half months later, the Delhi Pharmacy Council (DPC) issued him a registration number. With that, he began operating a pharmacy in Tikri, according to police investigators who worked on the case.

Mandal is one of thousands fraudulently running pharmacies across the country — a racket that came under the scanner on April 2, when Delhi's Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) arrested 48 people, including former DPC registrar Kuldeep Singh, as part of a widening investigation into fake pharmacy registrations.

Among those arrested by the ACB team headed by ACP Jarnail Singh were Sanjay Kumar, a tout from Narela, and Imlakh Khan, principal of the Baba Institute of Pharmacy in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. "We have arrested 35 fake pharmacists in Delhi and expect more arrests," said Madhur Verma, joint commissioner of police, ACB.