📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
A failed 1994 pre-university exam, a forged pass certificate, a Kharkiv degree: Assam's medical council strikes off a Tinsukia physician registered since 2016
Every Indian who goes abroad for medicine starts with a Class XII certificate. Foreign universities accept it on sight, and the regulator at home usually checks the degree rather than the school record beneath it. In Assam, the Council of Medical Registration (ACMR) has now removed a doctor from its register because the paper at the bottom of his file was counterfeit.
According to The Sentinel on 6 August 2026, the ACMR decided at its council meeting on 7 July to permanently remove Pankaj Goel, who practised at Life Care, Metro Plaza, Tinsukia, under registration number 23437, from the Register of Registered Medical Practitioners under Section 23(1) of the Assam Medical Council Act, 1999, and ordered him to surrender his registration certificate within seven days. The council found that he had failed the Pre-University Final Examination in 1994 and used forged pass certificates and marksheets purportedly from the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council and B. Borooah College, Guwahati, to enter the Faculty of General Medicine at Kharkiv State Medical University in Ukraine, where he was enrolled from 1995 to 2001. The erstwhile Medical Council of India had lodged a criminal case over the forged documents and, Medical Dialogues reported on 12 August, he was convicted of forgery in 2017, the council citing orders of the Delhi High Court and a Tis Hazari metropolitan magistrate. He had completed an internship at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital in New Delhi on provisional registration and registered with the ACMR on 15 June 2016 without, the council said, disclosing the criminal case.
MedBound Times, citing The Times of India, reported that a public complaint questioned his credentials, that the Assam State School Education Board told the council he had sat the 1994 Higher Secondary Science examination at B. Borooah College and failed and that the certificate he submitted was 'counterfeit', and that he had practised as a medicine specialist in Tinsukia for nearly a decade. The council's Anti-quackery and Vigilance Officer, Dr Abhijit Neog, led the inquiry. The written order, Medical Dialogues reported, is dated 29 July 2026 and signed by the Registrar, Dr Anup Kumar Das.
A Ukrainian university accepted a forged Class XII certificate, an Indian internship and provisional registration followed the degree, and a state council later granted permanent registration on an application that left out a criminal case.
For students the lesson is that an admission built on a false school document is never safe, however many degrees sit on top of it; the conviction came in 2017 and the register caught up in 2026. For patients, a registration number can be checked on the ACMR site, and a name removed there should not be practising anywhere.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.