In a bizarre incident, a mentally unstable patient pretending to be a doctor treated more than 20 patients in a district hospital in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur district. The man not only examined these 20 odd patients but also wrote prescriptions for them. As the news spread, the hospital authorities sprung to action. The patient was then taken away by the hospital staff and an alert was issued immediately.
This incident took place on 17th February (Monday) when the OPD in the Chhatarpur district hospital was crowded and all the doctors were busy attending patients. Around 20 patients had queued up outside chamber number 20 to see one doctor named Dr Himanshu Batham. However, Dr Batham was not on his seat. This mentally unsound man appeared from somewhere and took Dr Batham’s seat and started attending the patients.
When patients went to the hospital’s medical store with his handwritten prescriptions, it was then that the store manager, Anup Shukla got suspicious. Shukla asked those patients for the chamber number of the doctor who wrote the medicines. He then went to see for himself. On seeing that a mentally challenged person was examining the patients, Shukla alerted the hospital authorities who then took the person away.
According to local newspapers, the mental patient, who was later taken away from the hospital, identified himself as Dr Veer Bahadur, an ex-doctor with Delhi AIIMS. When asked why he wrote the wrong medicines, Veer Bahadur allegedly claimed that his prescriptions were 100 per cent accurate.
Speaking in fluent English, he said that since the patients waiting in the queue were getting agitated and since there was no doctor available to treat them, he took up the responsibility. He said that he had come to the hospital form study, but seeing waiting patients he decided to treat them.
Now the hospital authorities are facing the challenge of identifying those patients who have been prescribed medicines by this mentally unsound alleged doctor.
