Ahmedabad: City crime branch on Wednesday arrested Dr Sanjay Patolia, a senior medical professional and director of Khyati Hospital, in connection with two angioplasty deaths at the hospital on Nov 11. Patolia was taken into custody hours after a local court rejected his anticipatory bail plea on Tuesday.
A complaint was registered against Patolia and the other accused on Nov 13, two days after two patients from Borisana village in Mehsana died under suspicious circumstances after their angioplasty at the Bodakdev hospital. The autopsy report stated they died following cardiac arrest after the procedure.
The hospital is accused of conducting unnecessary medical procedures to avail itself of the benefits under Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY). Investigation had later found that three more patients had died at the hospital in a similar manner in the recent past.
According to police sources, Patolia, a resident of Altius-3 Apartments on Sindhu Bhavan Road, had gone to meet a doctor friend near Silver Oak University in Gota during the early hours of Wednesday when the cops caught him.
After the angioplasty deaths on Nov 11 brought Khyati Hospital under scanner, Patolia went to his New Life Hospital in Rajkot and spent the night there. On Nov 13, when he learned that an offence had been registered in the case, he left his car in the compound of the Rajkot hospital, switched off his mobile and fled to Udaipur by bus.
After reaching Udaipur on Nov 15, Patolia used public transport to travel to Nathdwara, Ajmer, Pali, Jaipur and Delhi and stayed in the hotels there to evade arrest. Wednesday’s development in the case has taken the total number of arrests to seven. The six others who were earlier arrested are:
hospital director Chirag Rajput, CEO Rahul Jain and three members of the marketing team of the hospital —Milind Patel, Pratik Bhatt and Pankil Patel. Kartik Patel, the owner of Khyati Hospital and a co-accused in the case, is in Dubai. He had filed a plea for anticipatory bail through his relative at Ahmedabad district court. They have been accused of culpable homicide and hatching criminal conspiracy to fraudulently obtain funds from PM-JAY.
From teaching to hospital mgmt
Dr Sanjay Patolia is the founder of Ahmedabad Bariatrics Hospital. In 2021, he started Khyati Multispeciality Hospital with new partners, Kartik Patel, Pradip Kothari and Chirag Rajput. Patolia is one of the directors of the hospital.
According to sources, he recruited doctors, managed the setting up of new departments at the hospital and made all the treatment-related decisions.
He worked as assistant professor at Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Medical College in Rajkot from 1999 to 2002. He then worked for eight months as a full-time surgeon at Padma Kunvarba Hospital in Rajkot in 2002-03 before joining Sardar Patel Hospital in Rajkot, where he served from 2003 to 2006.
In 2006, in partnership with three doctors, he started City Hospital, which is now known as New Life Hospital.
In 2012, Patolia, along with Dr Mahendra Narvariya and Dr Manish Khetan, started group practice in Ahmedabad under the name Ahmedabad Bariatrics and Cosmetic Pvt. Ltd., with Asian Bariatrics Hospital as the trade name.
From 2012 to 2014, he practised at Asian Bariatrics Hospital for one to two days a week and the rest of the days in Rajkot. From 2014, he began practising full-time at Asian Bariatrics Hospital. In 2016, Dr Manish Khetan left the hospital. In 2021, after Dr Mahendra Narvariya too left, Kartik Patel, Pradip Kothari and Chirag Rajput joined the hospital as partners.
Patolia serves as a full-time doctor in the bariatrics department at Khyati Hospital, while his wife, Dr Hetal Patolia, is a full-time doctor in the gynaecology department.
