A fake AIIMS conference letter with a forged faculty signature and a trust that did not exist: the 26-year-old caught posing as a resident doctor at KGMU Lucknow

King George's Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow is one of the largest teaching hospitals in Uttar Pradesh, with a busy campus of patients, attendants and students. A campus of that size is also a place where a stranger with a plausible story can move around unquestioned. In April 2026 the university's own students caught a man doing exactly that.

According to a PTI report carried by ThePrint (22 April 2026, datelined Lucknow, 21 April), Hassam Ahmad, 26, was apprehended inside the KGMU campus after MBBS students caught him collecting money from patients in the name of a fictitious trust called "Cardio Seva Sansthan". The university's proctorial office flagged the fraud and forgery to the police. Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Kamlesh Dixit said that several forged documents were found on the accused's mobile phone and that legal action would follow "as more facts come to light". An FIR was registered at Chowk police station under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and police said the accused was being interrogated and all aspects of the case were being probed.

Among the documents on the phone, police said, was a notice dated 13 April carrying the forged signature of a senior faculty member and inviting MBBS students of the 2023 batch to a conference at AIIMS Delhi on 29 April. Police found the conference to be false. Investigators suspected an attempt to lure students, particularly women, to Delhi or elsewhere under the pretext of the conference, and said a possible larger conspiracy was being examined. Medical Dialogues reported on 23 April, citing India Today and Hans India, that the man had posed as a resident doctor, that India Today described him as having studied only to Class 12, that the group's display picture showed a real KGMU doctor, and that gatherings and speeches had allegedly been organised inside hostel premises. Police confirmed the arrest and said further interrogation was under way to establish the extent of his activities and any accomplices.

The mechanism relied on borrowed authority: a real doctor's photograph on a fake trust, a real professor's signature on a fake letter, and the guise of a resident doctor to collect donations from patients who could not tell a resident from a stranger. The check that worked was peer scrutiny. Students who saw someone collecting money on a hospital campus did not assume he was entitled to, and the matter went to the proctorial office and then to the police, where the phone examination turned up the forged conference notice.

For students at any medical college the practical points are simple. Any conference invitation, scholarship or trip should be confirmed with the head of department directly, not through the person delivering the letter. Patients' families should pay nothing to anyone on a hospital campus except at the official counter against a receipt. And an unfamiliar resident who asks for money, phone numbers or travel is a matter for the proctor and the police, not for private negotiation.