On Friday, a Pune-based doctor said the medical services authority were yet to look into a complaint which was lodged against a traditional medicine practitioner in Pollachi 20 days ago. He had seeked action against him because he appeared to be a quack. The health services department said that it had sent a team to Pollachi to investigate the issue.

On October 17, in his complaint to the joint director of health services, Dr Johny Kumar Biswas said that Dr S K Bhadra, who runs Padma Clinic in Pollachi, had performed a surgery on his cousin Chiranjit Biswas to remove piles and his relative had contracted infection thereafter.

He said that Bhadra had inspected his cousin, a construction contractor in Mettupalayam, on August 13 and had promised to treat him without surgery. But, he prescribed injections, including anesthesia, and performed a surgery to remove the piles.

Dr Johny said that his cousin developed severe pain and continual rectal bleeding four to five days after the surgery. He met his cousin in Pune and found a wound with pus oozing and might have been the result of the surgery. Firstly, alternate system doctors are not supposed to perform surgery and this is a classic case of a quack which plays with people’s lives.

S K Bhadra had stated that he is a “specialist in piles, fistula, fissure, sinus and skin diseases” and his educational qualification is CASM. Bhadra said that he had studied ayurveda at the Madurai Kamaraj University but he refused to mention his degree. He said that they only give kashayams and medicines and do not perform surgery.

Dr Krishna, joint director of health services, said that she has accelerated the complaint to the team committed to expose medical quackery within her department. She said the team was sent to Pollachi on Friday to investigate about the doctor and the clinic. They had receive the complaint about the piles surgery with the resulting infection. The team, comprising a siddha officer, is in Pollachi and a lot of procedures regards to in holding quacks, in terms of verifying the complaint, investigating it and checking if his educational qualifications are fake.