Sixteen in Pandesara, nine in Dindoli, Rs 1.82 lakh of medicines and equipment seized: Surat police and health officials raid unqualified practitioners twice in October 2026

Gujarat's industrial cities draw migrant workers from across India, and the dense colonies around Surat's textile and diamond units are served by small clinics whose signboards promise a doctor. Many of the people behind the desk are not one. Under state law anyone treating patients needs a recognised degree and registration, and clinics need to be registered under the Clinical Establishments Act. In October 2026 Surat's Special Operations Group (SOG) and the district health department ran two drives in under three weeks against people practising without either.

According to a PTI report carried by Rediff on 13 October, the first drive that Tuesday hit clinics in the Pandesara area and ended with 16 alleged fake doctors apprehended. The operation followed a meeting with the Chief District Health Officer, Dr Anil B Patel. Deputy Commissioner of Police Rajdeepsinh Nakum said the accused held certificates ranging from Class 10 and Class 12 passes to BA and BSc degrees, and three of the 16 were repeat offenders. Medicines, injections and equipment worth Rs 1,82,444 were seized.

Medical Dialogues, citing IANS, reported on 31 October that a second joint raid, on the Thursday, 29 October, in the Dindoli area, caught nine more. Dummy patients were sent into the clinics first to confirm that treatment was being given. The qualifications claimed ran from Class 10 and Class 12 schooling to a BA, training in electropathy, pharmacy studies and earlier work as a compounder or nurse at hospitals in Sangamner in Maharashtra, Surat and Uttar Pradesh. The clinics had been running from six months to ten years; one operator had been arrested in Aurangabad in 2024 over fake pregnancy medicines. Police said the accused earned Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,500 a day, seized goods worth Rs 95,138, registered cases at Dindoli police station and handed the clinics to the health department for separate proceedings under the Clinical Establishments Act.

The mechanism is simple. A clinic opens in a working-class colony, a man in a white coat prescribes and injects, and nobody asks for a registration number because the patients cannot easily check one and the fees are low. What caught the 25 was not a complaint from a patient but a police unit sending in dummy patients and a health office willing to prosecute.

For families, the lesson is that a degree on the wall from a university nobody has heard of, or a claim to have 'worked in a hospital', is not a licence. Ask for the Gujarat Medical Council registration number and look it up. For students, the same raids are a warning: a diploma in electropathy or a few years as a compounder does not confer the right to practise, and the police do count years of practice as evidence, not as a defence.