A news report talking about the arrests of fake doctors from some of the top hospitals of Kolkata has gone viral on social media as a recent incident. The post states that 560 fake medical degrees were sold to people in Kolkata, of which one even received the president's award.
While the incident did take place, we found that the arrests were made in 2017. In June 2017, West Bengal CID identified over 500 doctors practising medicine in government and private hospitals using fake degrees.
CLAIM
The post has been shared with a caption that states 560 fake degrees were sold in the capital city of West Bengal and some of them who were working with a top hospital got arrested. It goes on to state that one of the doctors received an award from the President of India.
An archive of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We fragmented the video into different keyframes by using a video verification tool, InVID. Further, we performed a reverse image search, supplementing it with the keywords, "fake doctors in Kolkata."
This led us to a video uploaded on the official YouTube channel of NDTV, an Indian news organization, on 9 June 2017. The description of video mentioned, "Six fake doctors have been arrested in West Bengal in the last one month. A seventh person was arrested for selling fake MBBS certificates. According to latest reports, large quantities of fake medicines too have been seized in Hooghly district."
The WebQoof team also probed the second part of the claim, which stated one of the fake doctors received an award from the President of India.
According to a report published by The Indian Express on 3 June 2017, Subhendu Bhattarcharya was arrested by the Howrah Police in connection with the fake doctors racket in Kolkata. It mentioned that the doctor was using a fake registration number and had also received an award from the then President Pranab Mukherjee. However, there is no such information on whether the award was related to the medical field.
Evidently, a five-year-old video is being shared on the internet, claiming it to be a recent incident.
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