The mobile court of Rapid Action Battalion [RAB] sealed National Care General Hospital, a private clinic operated by some quacks at Babar Road in the city’s Mohammadpur area conducting a raid there in the wee hours of Saturday.
According to RAB, the clinic situated on the second floor of a six-storied building at 16/14 Babar Road near National Orthopaedic Hospital [Pangu Hospital] had been giving ‘fake treatment along with anesthesia and operation’ to the patients in the mid of night.
The quacks use ‘electric drill machine’ [for holing brick wall] instead of modern medical equipment to adjust or cut bones of the patients. The quacks used to make holes in the bone of the patients to pull the broken part tying with strings.
RAB court awarded jail term and imposed fines to seven persons for their alleged involvement in fake treatment to general people.
The accused were identified as Babul Chandra Pike, Ratan Krishna Majumder and Antara Sikdar — all hailed from Pirojpur, Imam Hassan from Jessore, Jewel Miah from Shariatpur, Masum Billah from Khulna and Shova Banik from Gopalganj.
The RAB court led by executive magistrate HM Anwar Pasha awarded one-year imprisonment and Tk 105,000 fine or three-month jail to Babul Chandra Pike and Ratan Krishna Majumder. The rest were fined Tk 5000 or seven days jail by the court.
“The owner of the clinic Babul Chandra Pike and his in-law Ratan Krishna Majumder had been operating the patients by giving anesthesia
in the late of night without taking any help from professional doctors,” executive magistrate HM Anwar Pasha said.
He said that as a part of treatment, they had been making holes in the bone with the electric drill machine which is highly risky. It damages human bones, as the rotating speed of drill machine is higher that the actual medical equipment.
RAB officials said Ratan, an eight class pass student, was a fish [Hilsa] trader of Khulna about five years ago while the owner of clinic Babul has passed only SSC exam.
They had engaged a gang of brokers to bring the patients to their clinic. Mostly poor and illiterate patients were their targets. Each broker got Tk 500 for bringing a patient. Besides, the brokers also got 30 percent of the total bill of the patients.
RAB officials also said that Babul had served as manager and partner in different private clinics. Later, he became owner of this 10-bed clinic seven years ago. He managed to get license of 50-bed hospital from Directorate of Health a few months ago and transferred the clinic to this building.
But no nurse or medical staff was found during the raid, RAB officials added.
