Former lab technician held for duping people by posing as high-ranking official, doctor

A 44-year-old man, reeling from a failed pathology lab business, posed at different times as assistant professor at AIIMS, Delhi, an advisor in Niti Aayog and a paediatrician to cheat people and seek favours at government facilities, the Delhi Police said on Thursday after arresting him.

Identified as Devender Kumar Mishra, the arrested suspect had allegedly been using a host of fake identifies for nearly a decade until a tip-off from an army officer landed him in the Delhi Police’s net on Tuesday.

Shibesh Singh, additional commissioner of police (crime branch), said Mishra would sometimes pose as a joint secretary with the health ministry and other times as an assistant professor at AIIMS. He would also allegedly pose as an advisor to the Niti Aayog and as a paediatrician with a hospital in Madhya Pradesh, the state to which he belongs.

“Once he posed as a senior bureaucrat to recommend an arms licence for a man in Uttar Pradesh, in lieu of money. On another occasion, he opened a clinic in Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh,” said the additional CP.

Bhism Singh, deputy commissioner of police (crime branch), said at the clinic, Mishra put up a board saying he had degrees in paediatrics from AIIMS and joined hands with a nurse to provide medical services.

“There were occasions when Mishra would pose as a joint secretary to stay at army messes and receive facilities meant for high-ranking officials,” said the DCP.

Mishra would allegedly claim to be a visiting faculty to different medical colleges. “He used all these impersonations to promise people help with transfers and jumping the queues at hospitals for surgeries and other treatments. He would dupe people of money in this manner,” said the DCP.

The multiple hats that Mishra donned was what finally did him in, the police said.

“On December 28, we received an email from an army officer who found it suspicious that a man could hold so many different positions, ranging from an assistant professor to a joint secretary and a doctor to Niti Aayog advisor,” said DCP Singh.

On Tuesday, the police arrested him from Panchkuian Road in Central Delhi.

The police said the man is a trained lab technician. “He ran a lab in Rewa in Madhya Pradesh two decades ago. In Delhi, he opened a blood collection centre in east Delhi in 2008, but it soon wrapped up and he began perpetrating this fraud,” the officer said.

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