Fake birth cert racket busted at district hospital

Indore: A 'fake' birth certificate racket has come to fore at Indore district hospital wherein hospital staff used to issue the certificates dated even before the existence of the hospital.Nearly 89 computerized and hand-written birth certificates dated before 2007 were issued to the applicants.
The facts were brought forth by a three-member panel that had been constituted by chief medical and health officer Dr SL Porwal after a complaint was lodged with district collector about fake birth certificate racket running at the hospital.
The collector had directed additional collector Dilip Kumar to probe the matter.
The report submitted by the panel revealed that data entry operator at the hospital, Vipin Verma, had been assigned responsibility of making the birth certificates. He used to make certificates through a software, the password of which was given to him by civil surgeon Dr Ratan Khandelwal. Verma, in his statement, said that Khandelwal used to take certain amount from the applicants for issuing the birth certificates. The committee report stated that the civil surgeon recommended issuing of the birth certificates on paper chits and they didn't maintain any record of them. The committee submitted its report to district collector P Narahari and recommended a high-level inquiry into the matter.
Khandelwal however refuted the allegations, stating that he never gave any paper chits to issue fake certificates. "Vipin was appointed before I took over as civil surgeon. If there is any proof, let him submit it to the panel. I have given all the evidence to the probe committee. Vipin has given false statement in the affidavit, which anyone can do. When I got complaint against Vipin, I immediately took action," said Khandelwal.