Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Fake notes, fake papers... and now fake nurses

LAW &ORDER Hospitals and nursing homes need to check verify the credentials of those walking in for nursing jobs, says L. Srikrishna

We have heard about fake currencies, fake passports, fake documents and so on. Now, the police have discovered a fake nurse.

Recently, a young woman was arrested on charges of cheating and stealing 20 sovereigns of stolen gold. Her husband was also found guilty, and he too has been jaile.

Their modus operandi was simple. According to investigators, the woman got a job in a private nursing home posing as a trained nurse by furnishing bogus certificates.

Next, she administered sedatives to an in-patient; when the victim was sedated, the `nurse' removed her valuables and walked away unnoticed.

The incident raises many questions, including the safety of patients undergoing treatment in hospitals. For instance, it is not known how many hospitals verify the antecedents of their employees. In the event of any theft or property missing complaints made by the in-patients, how many hospitals bring it to the knowledge of the local police station? Is there any CCTV or surveillance cameras installed in hospitals to check anti-socials sneaking into the wards under the guise of say nursing or paramedical staff? The list goes on. Police said that in September, a young woman Ramalakshmi of Perungudi was admitted to a popular private nursing home in Besant Nagar, Tiruvanmiyur as in-patient. A duty nurse Jaya is learnt to have given anaesthesia to Ramalakshmi and quietly removed her eight sovereign gold chain and fled. When Ramalakshmi woke up, she was shocked to find her `mangalsutra' missing. As attempts to trace the valuable were futile, her husband Marimuthu filed a complaint with the Tiruvanmiyur police.

Special party

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Adyar) Mahendra Kumar Rathod formed a special party comprising ACP Hari and team to investigate the case. An investigating officer said Jaya had given a fictitious address to the private hospital. A discreet probe revealed that she belonged to Theni district and claimed to have taken training in two private hospitals in the certificate furnished by her. "When we checked, we found the claims were false. Later, we came to know that she had a mobile phone, which helped us track her down. We found that Jaya's original name was Jacqueline Mary and she had a son studying in a local school in Chennai. When she came to the school to drop her son, we trapped her," said the officer.

After interrogating her, police recovered the stolen jewels from a pawnbroker in the city. Jaya, alias Jacqueline Mary, admitted to similar crimes in Chennai and Madurai hospitals, in which she had stolen 40-50 sovereigns.

The lesson here for hospitals is that they should verify the credentials of the staff they recruit, if they don't want to be easy targets for such criminals.

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