Twelve doctors registered on fake Taishan Medical University certificates, two BMDC officers charged, seven arrested in Segunbagicha: the Dhaka case where the regulator's own check failed

In Bangladesh the regulator of doctors is the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council, the BMDC. A foreign medical graduate must pass its Registration Qualifying Examination before receiving a registration number, and that register is the document anyone can check. The case below shows what happens when the people who keep the register stop checking.

According to The Daily Star, a 2018 raid on the BMDC by the Anti-Corruption Commission found twelve people practising medicine on MBBS certificates purportedly from Taishan Medical University in China. They had passed the qualifying examination on those certificates and worked at hospitals. On 21 January 2019, the paper reported, the university said the certificates were fake, and handwriting experts found that the signatures of several Foreign Ministry officials had been forged. On 2 December 2020 the ACC filed a case against fourteen people: the twelve, plus BMDC registrar Dr Md Zahedul Haque Basunia and administrative officer Mohammad Borhan Uddin, responsible for verifying certificates. The case statement, quoted by the paper, said: "It appears they were aware of the forge certificates."

According to The Business Standard, on 3 January 2022 the High Court rejected an anticipatory bail plea from one accused, Mahmudul Haque, jailed him and ordered the arrest of the rest. On 19 January 2022 an ACC team led by Deputy Director Selina Akhtar Moni arrested seven men in Dhaka's Segunbagicha area: Iman Ali, Sudeb Sen, Tanmoy Ahmed, Moktar Hossain, Md Kawsar, Rahmat Ali and Masood Parvez. ACC Secretary Md Mahbub Hossain told the paper that none of the twelve had studied at Taishan, whose School of International Education had confirmed the certificates were fake; some, the paper reported, had gone to China only on tourist visas. Four other accused and the two BMDC officials were still at large.

The mechanism is in one sentence the registrar gave The Daily Star in 2018: "Since they give authentication, we did not verify it further", meaning the Bangladesh embassy in China and the Foreign Ministry. The council relied on attestations that were themselves forged, and nobody asked the university. The ACC said the BMDC took no precautions and did not follow its own rules.

For a student or family, two lessons. First, a registration number is not proof on its own when the regulator's own checking is weak. Second, your own degree will one day be checked by someone more careful. Enrol only at a school listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools, pay the university rather than an agent, keep your admission letter, transcripts and visa pages, and remember that a tourist visa is not a student visa. Anyone offering a certificate without years in a classroom is selling you the next ACC case.