Carried out trials okayed by dean, supt, says VS doc
Ahmedabad:
Dr Devang Rana
, associate professor and clinical head at VS Hospital, suspended by
Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation
(AMC) over illegal
clinical trials
had last week submitted a written response on the allegations, saying he was only acting on the orders of superiors. His explanation to the chairman of the Medical Education Trust (MET) and AMC on April 17 states, "I was appointed as the clinical head at
VS Hospital
in 2021. I conducted clinical trial activities that the
NHL Medical College
dean and the VS Hospital superintendent had permitted."
He added, "I did not engage in any serious negligence, financial misconduct, or misbehaviour. I was appointed as the clinical head at VS Hospital by the order of the AMC and the NHL Medical College dean. The activities were conducted with the approval of the NHL Medical College dean and the VS Hospital superintendent. AMC MET's SOP was limited to NHL, Narendra Modi Medical College, and AMC-MET Dental College. My role was to ensure that clinical trials were conducted as per the agreement. I was not responsible for financial transactions. AMC did not request any evidence from me."
The statement further reads, "As the principal investigator, I provided all evidence to the VS Hospital superintendent on March 17 and March 28, 2025, detailing all trials conducted to date. All trials were conducted per DCGI regulations, without any irregularities, and were known to the superintendent. The investigation confirmed this. The information regarding the remuneration I received was provided by the site managing officer. The claim about transferring money to my relatives' accounts is false."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Indian Express
Housing societies, telecom tower, parking lot: The story of Ahmedabad's ‘vanished' lakes
What is common between a group of residential societies in Ghatlodia, a telecom tower in Vejalpur, and a dumpsite in the East Zone? Going by an internal report of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), all of these structures and sites stand on what were once lakes in the city. And that's not all. According to the report, the city has as many as 37 'vanished' lakes. A recent anti-encroachment drive in Ahmedabad's Chandola Lake area, preceded by an exercise to weed out alleged illegal Bangladeshis in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, saw a total of 12,500 residential, commercial and religious structures reduced to rubble, and four lakh square metres of land cleared. While the authorities stated that all these structures were illegal, and Municipal Commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani defended the demolitions, calling the water bodies 'sacrosanct', questions are being raised about the status of other lakes, including those which have made way for even government buildings. Take the case of an unnamed lake in Thaltej. According to the AMC progress report on the status of lakes, not only does this site house a residential society, it also serves as a base for a water distribution centre of the civic body. In Jodhpur area, a temple stands on the site of an unnamed talavadi (smaller lake/pond) while the erstwhile Kasai Lake in Sarkhej has a mosque and a few residential encroachments. Also in Sarkhej, religious and commercial encroachments can be seen where Malkani Lake once existed, according to the report. While Nikol Lake in the East zone has turned into a dumpsite, Kanetri lake in the same area has reportedly been subsumed by residential and commercial encroachments. The report also mentions several such disappeared lakes that have now been hidden by construction on all sides, leaving no space for a road, whenever it is built, to access them. An example is Gam Talav Kharabo, a listed water body located in Ghatlodia of the North-west Zone. During a visit by The Indian Express, multiple residential societies were found at the site. An entry into what was likely the centre of the lake leads to a cow shed complete with a cattle trough. A puddle caused by unseasonal rain was the only sign of water in the area. Brahmani Talavadi, which used to be located on Corporate Road in Makarba, has also completely vanished. In its place stands an entire gated society containing type E and type D government quarters built by the revenue department. AMC and Collectorate officials, both, declined to comment on these cases. A water body marked as Vejalpur lake does not even have the sloped identifiers required on the banks. It is simply a rectangular plot of land with two-third portion housing an unofficial parking space by local residents, a dumpsite for construction debris, and a feeding zone for pigeons. The remaining portion is a walled-off area containing an office and a telecom tower bearing the marking of public sector company BSNL. The fact that these buildings have encroached on plots of land that were lakes was confirmed by coordinates mentioned in the report accessed by The Indian Express. A unique case is that of the Vatva area, which has a site called Bibi Lake. Local residents who stay on its banks say the water body fills up during monsoon. Construction debris could be seen strewn across more than two thirds of the lake. During its visit, The Indian Express could see some water in a section of the lake. 'The lake fills up to the brim during monsoons as the water from the road drains into it,' said a boy who was heading to a tuition class, taking the dried-up lake bed as a shortcut. During summers, though, the lake is little more than a patch of marsh, made all the more dangerous by piles of brickwork, ceramics and wooden furniture piled onto it. On the side that is still dry, a makeshift cricket pitch could be seen. When asked about the encroachments, an AMC official said, 'In places where buildings have come up, we are taking a call on a case-by-case basis after sending proposals to the state government. This is a policy matter.' Congress Councillor Shehzad Khan Pathan, who had raised the matter during a board meeting in May, told The Indian Express: 'Wherever there is jhuppad patti (kutcha houses), these people (AMC) cite the Supreme Court order that encroachment cannot be done on a water body. But when the government itself does encroachment on lakes, why does nobody remember the order? They should also face the same action that the poor people did. The government cannot carry out encroachment and then run bulldozers only on poor people.' The Leader of Opposition in the AMC further said, 'On Saijpur Lake, there are 40 commercial establishments whose impact fee applications are pending. In another place, there appears to be a metro project construction on a lake.' Impact fee is the amount charged for regularising illegal constructions in Gujarat. Amul Bhatt, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA of Maninagar and former Standing Committee Chairman of the AMC, said, 'I have raised the issue of encroachments on lakes several times in the past one year. Lakes must be kept as water reservoirs and there should be no construction on them, including government buildings.' Most lakes in Ahmedabad city were, until recently, under the purview of the Revenue Department of Gujarat through the Ahmedabad Collectorate. On the AMC's initiative, many lakes were transferred to the civic body. However, the transfer of ownership of several lakes, including Chandola Lake, is pending, confirmed two senior officials of the urban housing and urban development department. Explaining the handover process, BR Sagar, the Resident Additional Collector (RAC) of Ahmedabad district, said, 'When the Collectorate gets a request from the municipal corporation for transfer of a plot identified as a lake, we seek permission from the revenue department. Required orders are passed and the ownership is transferred to the city.' On the conflict between the two government bodies regarding encroachments on lakes, a revenue department official said, 'While the revenue department asked the Collectorate to hand over the lakes to the AMC in their current state, the latter asked the Collectorate to first clear all the encroachments on the lakes and then transfer them. Recently, a solution was reached where the bodies decided to work together to clear the encroachments as they did on Chandola Lake.' Officials said encroachments on other lakes will also be removed with similar 'cooperation'. The second question was that of the area of land on which the lakes are situated. 'Till the time the Collectorate had ownership of the lakes, there was no question of surveying and assessing the size of the land. However, during the time of transfer of ownership, it became necessary to measure the plots with lakes in them. This process is underway in several lakes that are to be handed over to the AMC, which is why the transfers are still pending,' said an official in the know of the process. Dr Jayanti Ravi, the Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) of the Revenue Department, said that the state of the lakes in Ahmedabad had been brought to her notice by local politicians, and a meeting between the Collectorate and Commissionerate had led to the handing over of several lakes to the city while others were still pending due to the amount of paperwork involved in the process. But mostly, evidence of historic lakes or talavadis being on certain plots of land, whether dried out, encroached or having completely vanished, come from the 7/12 (saat-baara) — a revenue department document denoting ownerships and other critical information on status of a plot of land. A revenue department official said, 'It will be mentioned in the 7/12 document that there is a lake on a specific plot of land. Now, if the lake is not in existence at the moment, the irrigation department can be asked to check if the plot is a water reservoir. Officials of the revenue department can then take a call on whether to remove the lake status from that particular plot of land or not. 'Though Chandola Lake doesn't have water all year round, it fills up during monsoon. Hence, it is a water reservoir and thus must remain one,' said an official. The AMC had sought the transfer of 142 lakes from the Revenue Department, said RAC Sagar. 'While 27 lakes have been handed over, plots of 82 of them are being measured and will be transferred after this process. AMC's request for 33 lakes is still under due consideration.' Besides turning larger water bodies into lakefronts on the lines of Vastrapur and Kankaria in Ahmedabad, there has been a push to use the 'blue cover' in the city to mitigate floods and direct the rain water to recharge them. This is expected to also counter the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect – a phenomenon when certain pockets within a city experience higher heat load than surrounding or neighbouring areas on the same day. For this, the AMC has been working on the lake-interlinking project that uses hydrology, land gradient and gravity to interconnect clusters of lakes in the same area to accommodate stormwater as well as reservoirs that can be filled using Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs). Currently, there are seven sets of lakes that are already interlinked or where work in this direction is underway. Mirant Parikh, the Deputy Municipal Commissioner (DyMC) for Water and Drainage Projects at the AMC, said, 'We are planning interlinking in groups of lakes located next to each other. So, what happens is that water will go into the lakes through STPs but if one lake gets full, water can flow into other lakes.' Parikh said that in the other lakes, pre-monsoon work was underway to ensure that they accommodate more water. 'In small lakes, we will implement cost-effective development models and make catch pits to divert rain water into them so that the flooding issue is resolved during monsoon. We will also increase their water carrying capacity by deepening them – a process that is underway,' Parikh added. With the handover of Chandola Lake to the AMC imminent, the planning to turn it into a 'city attraction' is already underway. The first plan, said officials, is to finish clearing all the debris. Until a few weeks ago, the area was home to thousands of people, some of whom claimed they had been staying there for generations. As a result, so much is the volume of remnants of their homes that AMC has invited anyone seeking to salvage scrap, wood or other material to freely do so in the hope that it will reduce the burden for the civic body. At the same time, work is on to deepen the lake bed as well as construct a boundary wall with a platform and fencing through which visitors could view the lake. Now the question: Where will the water come from? Officials said there are three viable ways to bring water to Chandola. One is from the Kharicut canal, the other is from an STP in Bapunagar. The third is a proposal to construct a new STP on the banks of Chandola. But a major shift that the lake premises will likely go through entails changing the geography of the area. Chandola Lake premises is made up of three water bodies — the greater Chandola and two smaller (Nana) lakes to its north and north east — all separated by a land barrier. This land barrier is where major parts of the encroachments had come up over the last three or four decades. Deputy Municipal Commissioner Riddhesh Raval told The Indian Express that the land barrier will be removed to unify all the three lakes to turn the entire four lakh square metres into a single water body. This, said Raval, is important because the water inlets from the STP near the Malek Saban Lake in Bapunagar and the water line connecting Kharicut canal are linked to one of the smaller Chandola lakes. If the barrier is not demolished, the water won't reach the greater lake, thus defeating the purpose of the project.
Time of India
11 hours ago
- Time of India
Couple promise AMC jobs to five, cheat them of 55L
Ahmedabad: The Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) police on Sunday registered an FIR against a couple from Vatva for allegedly cheating five people of a total Rs 55.38 lakh after promising them jobs in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). The complainant, a 40-year-old resident of Paldi, approached the police with a detailed account of the fraud. According to her, after the death of her husband in May 2020, she began looking for a job to support her two children. In Sep 2022, she was introduced to a woman through a relative. The woman claimed she worked in AMC and could secure a sanitary inspector job for the complainant in return for Rs 5.5 lakh. The complainant paid the amount in cash at her brother's home. Later, she received a call from a man, who identified himself as an AMC official. He confirmed her selection and assigned her to the Bopal area. She was also told she could work from home. A few days later, she was issued a fake appointment letter with AMC's logo on it and instructed to report for survey work in municipal wards. In Feb 2023, the woman who received the money told the complainant that she did not meet the age criteria for the sanitary inspector's post and could choose to work in the HR department. The woman allegedly demanded an additional Rs 1.9 lakh for the transfer. Convinced, the complainant paid the amount. Over time, she made multiple payments to the woman through UPI and cash. In all, she paid Rs 21.74 lakh, including Rs 50,000 and Rs 54,000 on two occasions and Rs 30,000 as exam fee. The woman then claimed the complainant could be appointed to the head officer's post if she paid Rs 20 lakh. The complainant arranged Rs 13 lakh and gave it to the woman. To gain her trust, the accused arranged phone calls with a man who introduced himself as a senior AMC officer. The complainant later discovered that both the woman and the man, who turned out to be her husband, did not work for AMC and that all the documents she had received, including salary slips and appointment letters, were forged. The complaint also revealed that the couple had allegedly cheated four other individuals in the same manner. A Ghatlodia resident and Maninagar resident each lost Rs 8.3 lakh, a man from Wadhwan was cheated out of Rs 6.79 lakh and another from the same town lost Rs 10.24 lakh.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
Owners not registering their dogs to be issued notices
Ahmedabad: As the deadline to register pet dogs ends on June 30, 17,336 of the estimated 50,000 canine companions in the city have been registered so far, data released by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on Friday stated. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Officials added that besides the cattle nuisance control department (CNCD) issuing new guidelines on owning dogs soon, the AMC will also be issuing notices to owners failing to register theirs. From Jan 1, when registrations started, till June 6, 10,168 dogs from Ahmedabad's west and 7,168 from the eastern parts have been registered. AMC sources said that registrations have picked up after the Hathijan incident where a rottweiler caused the death of an infant. Meanwhile, under its proposed policy, the CNCD is mulling several protocols for pet owners, including a ban on taking pet dogs to public places such as gardens and lakes. It will be mandatory to muzzle the dogs on walks. The policy will also define liability of owners, including compensation to victims, in case of attacks. The proposed policy is expected to be tabled before the AMC standing committee soon. The mandatory registration is part of the Union ministry of health and family welfare's target to make cities rabies-free by 2030. Labrador retrievers continued to top the ownership charts, with 4,947 registered so far, showing the city's love for this loving, intelligent and family-friendly breed. Registration data shows over 60 breeds.
