R637,087.75 in intern pay, one unfinished module, a certificate without a graduation: former Northdale Hospital intern charged with fraud over an MBChB UKZN says it never conferred

South Africa's Health Professions Council (HPCSA) registers every doctor, and a hospital may only place an intern who appears on that register. That register, however, is only as good as the university record behind it. A case now before the Durban Specialised Commercial Crime Court shows what can happen when a provincial hospital, the regulator and a university all take a graduation record on trust.

According to The Witness (3 October 2026), Reshal Dayanand, 39, appeared briefly in the court on charges of fraud, forgery, contravening the Health Professions Act and contravening the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act. He was released on warning and the matter was postponed to 19 November 2026. KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Simphiwe Mhlongo said Dayanand studied medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) from 2007 to 2015, was academically excluded in 2013, was readmitted in 2015 at the dean's discretion and did not complete one outstanding module. Police allege he nonetheless registered with the HPCSA as a doctor, was placed as an intern at Northdale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg in 2016 and earned R637,087.75. The Hawks allege he colluded with an unidentified UKZN official to generate an academic record showing every module passed, and that a fraudulent MBChB certificate was produced although he attended no graduation. IOL (4 October 2026) carried the same Hawks account. His attorneys told The Witness (5 October 2026) that the allegations date from about 2017, that he was served with a summons rather than arrested, that he maintains his innocence and that he has not been convicted of any offence.

The case had stalled for years. Sunday World (3 May 2026) reported that a Department of Health investigation found he had submitted fraudulent qualifications, that hospital officials admitted no qualification check had been done, that one registration form carried a forged signature, and that on 13 March 2017 the hospital learned he had been "erroneously registered" and suspended him the same day. The Mail & Guardian (9 July 2026) reported that UKZN denied conferring a medical degree on him and quoted Hawks spokesperson Colonel Katlego Mogale saying the investigation had been finalised and handed to prosecutors, while the VP Justice Foundation complained that the case had stalled. MedicalBrief (June 2022, citing the Sunday Tribune) reported that the HPCSA wrote to UKZN in March 2017 saying he had used fraudulent results to register and that it was deregistering him, that UKZN's investigation found he was not on its 2016 graduation list, and that he asked the Pietermaritzburg High Court to compel the university to let him complete his final year; judgment was reserved.

The mechanism was simple. On the sources' account, nobody at the hospital verified the degree with the university, the HPCSA registration rested on a qualification the university says it never conferred, and UKZN told the court it did not know who had verified the qualification before registration. The discrepancy surfaced only when the university checked its own graduation list.

For a student or family the lesson is that a registration number is not the end of due diligence. Ask any practitioner, agent or "senior doctor" offering help which university conferred the degree and in which year, and check both the regulator's register and the university's own graduation records. Keep copies of every document you are shown, and if the two records do not match, walk away and report it.