In November 2023, south Delhi doctor Neeraj Agarwal was arrested after a first information report was filed against his medical facility, Agarwal Medical Centre, and several other complaints in cases that involved the deaths of 15 people.
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On October 25, 2023, the FIR was registered on charges of culpable homicide, destruction of evidence and criminal conspiracy, among other sections of the Indian Penal Code. Agarwal was arrested on November 14, 2023. He was given bail by the Delhi high court in August 2024.
Now out on bail, Agarwal appears to have not only reopened the Agarwal Medical Centre in GK-1 but also allegedly opened up a second facility, Life Line Hospital in Kalkaji and returned to practising medicine there, according to visits, eyewitness statements, photographs and documents seen by HT.
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When apprised of the matter, deputy commissioner of police (south) Ankit Chauhan said, “We are inquiring into the matter”.
When contacted Agarwal said that he was allowed to practice medicine and the hospital was being run by his father. “The lease is in my name but we have rented the premises to my father and he is running the hospital” he said.
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When asked about the operations of Agarwal Medical Centre, he denied it was operational. “It’s currently shut” he said.
HT saw the lease deed documents of the Kalkaji property, which were in the names of Neeraj Agarwal and his wife Pooja Agarwal, a high school graduate who was also arrested by police in 2023. The GK-I property is also owned by Agarwal, according to police documents in the 2023 case.
Police said the GK-1 facility preyed on patients from lower-middle class backgrounds and operated on them dangerously, after the victims were lured by a combination of cheap prices and the credibility that came from being located in a South Delhi neighbourhood. Other than the Agarwals, the police arrested Mahender Singh, their lab technician, and Jaspreet Singh Bajwa, a doctor who worked in a private hospital but allegedly prepared fake surgery notes.
After the arrests in 2023, the centre shut down.
But 15 months later, the centre appears to be back up and running. When HT visited the Agarwal Medical Centre in GK-I on March 28 around 2pm, a young woman was found sitting behind the reception desk while the centre was empty. “The centre is fully functional,” she said when asked if it’s still running.
Rajiv Kakria, member of the GK-I resident welfare association, confirmed that the centre was open and residents reported in WhatsApp group that they have seen touts bringing in patients late at night to the facility. “Residents said the centre is running in a clandestine manner. Residents have seen touts bringing in patients and have also confronted Neeraj and Pooja but nothing has happened,” he said. In a video shot by local residents and given to HT by the RWA, an autorickshaw purportedly bringing patients to the facility can be seen.
On March 28, HT visited Life Line hospital in Kalkaji’s K-Block, located in a market, with three residential floors above the premises. A board with the words ‘Life Line Hospital’ on it stood outside the facility, along with two mobile phone numbers.
In a second board inside, Neeraj Agarwal was listed as a “senior consultant” and Pooja Agarwal as managing director. Another board outside listed the services the facilities offered which included “laparoscopic stone surgery, delivery/operation/abortion, hernia/appendix/ hydrocele, piles/fissure/ fistula, diabetes/hypertension, fever/abdominal pain/loose motion, blood transfusion/breathing problems, prostate surgery/ urinary obstruction, ovarian cyst/uterus removal”. The same services were offered at Agarwal Medical Centre before the accused were arrested in November 2023.
The Kalkaji hospital has 12 beds and an operation theatre, said a local resident who went inside the facility and requested anonymity.
When HT visited the Life Line Hospital on March 28 at 1.15pm, Agarwal and Mahender Singh were attending to patients. A 25-year-old man, whom HT took along, complained of stomach ache. Agarwal and Mahender Singh attended to the man. Neeraj checked him and advised an ultrasound to “rule out stones”. Mahender said “could also rule out appendix” during the consultation.
Mahender, according to the police, used to pose as a doctor, speak in fluent English, and perform thousands of surgeries without a medical degree. He is a Class 12 passout, according to a police probe.
Agarwal charged ₹500 for the consultation, wrote a prescription with painkillers, handed two strips of medicines, and charged ₹250 for them. The reporter paid ₹750 using a QR code, which stated that the money was going to “Agarwal Medical Centre”.
The prescription mentioned that Life Line Hospital was “Delhi Medical Council Regd”. But the registration number was not mentioned. According to the code of medical ethics regulation, 2002, it is mandatory for doctors to write the DMC registration number on their prescription slips.
There were multiple patients inside the facility when HT visited.
Officials at the DMC said that Agarwal’s medical license was cancelled for a year in September 2024 but he later challenged it in the national medical council (NMC) and a decision was pending. “Determined vide order dated 10th September, 2024, It was also decided to remove the name of Dr Neeraj Agarwal (Delhi Medical Council Registration No.4402) as well as that of Dr D.C. Agarwal (Dinesh Chandra, Delhi Medical Council Registration No.4064) from the state medical register of the Delhi Medical Council for a period of 365 days each,” read the order, passed on complaint 3986 against Agarwal.
After DMC gives the order of suspension of a doctor’s licence, the person is given two months’ time to appeal to NMC. Till the appeal is decided, the DMC verdict is considered not applicable, a DMC official said.
A list of doctors placed on the upper ground floor inside the facility had Agarwal’s name in third place, with the description “MBBS, MD (Safdarjung Hospital)” and designation as “senior consultant”. His father, Dr DC Agarwal, was number one on the list, also described as a senior consultant, with the degrees “MBBS, DA”.
On the ground floor of the facility, there were five rooms. In one of them, Pooja Agarwal was mentioned on a name plate as managing director. HT has photographs corroborating these.
In its bail order for Agarwal and his wife Pooja, one of the conditions imposed by the high court was that the duo was “not to indulge in the business of running any medical centre.”
When the Agarwals were arrested in 2023, police said at least seven complaints against Agarwal Medical Centre were sent to DMC, in which families of victims alleged death by negligence. On at least three occasions in the past, DMC had suspended his medical licence.
Police registered a case on October 25, 2023 based on a complaint by Nasibun Nisha, a resident of Sangam Vihar, whose husband died of alleged medical negligence at Agarwal Medical Centre.
On September 19 in 2022, Ali died during a surgery — while being operated upon, allegedly, by Mahender, the lab technician who appears to have returned to work in Kalkaji.
The family told police that before the surgery, Agarwal said that it would be conducted by Jaspreet Singh, a surgeon, but later allegedly replaced him with Mahender. The complainant alleged that she came to know later that Mahender and Pooja – both described by the centre as holding medical degrees – were not doctors.
The alleged surgeries were performed at Agarwal Medical Centre in GK-I, said the police in its FIR.
On September 9, 2022, the family of 27-year-old Kiran Devi, a resident of Mahipalpur, alleged that due to medical negligence during a laparoscopic cholecystectomy (surgery for removal of gallbladder stones), she died. The family also told police that the doctors did not follow due procedure.
After the arrest in 2023, at least 17 other people approached police informing them of the alleged medical negligence by Agarwal and his associates. At the time, Agarwal denied all charges, and said he followed procedure.
Rajan Thakur, 42, a resident of Jaitpur, who had lost his 15-month-old son in May 2019 after Agarwal allegedly operated on the boy, said he had heard that the doctor was released on bail and was building a hospital. “After he was arrested, I had approached the Delhi Medical Council with my complaint. They have called me four times since then but did not punish this man. He should not have been given bail,” said Thakur.
(With inputs from Ridhima Gupta)
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