ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) on Thursday registered a First Information Report (FIR) against a medical college after it received an application from the college, accompanied by forged documents, for the accreditation of a teacher.

The documents were confiscated and an FIR registered in the first-ever case of its kind, where a faculty member who had been teaching students for some years was found to have forged registration documents.

A representative of the Mohammad bin Qasim Medical and Dental College (MBQMDC)inKarachisubmittedanapplication with the PMDC, stating that Hasan Aziz had been employed at their institution as an assistant professor since January 2015.

PMDC had previously stopped admissionsat the institution due to various inadequacies, including a shortage of faculty members. The college was advised to beef up its faculty before it could begin admissions.

A PMDC official said that an MBQMDC representative submitted the documents for Assistant Professor of Medicine Hasan Aziz for the purposes of faculty registration. The documents, available with Dawn, state that Aziz was being paid Rs.115,000 per month.

The official said that PMDC officials grew suspicious of the professor`s registration certificate, which bore the issue date of August 2011 and an expiration date of December 2015. Also suspicious was the fact that the certificate bore the signature of Syed Ehtram Ali, who had left the PMDC in 2001 almost ten years before the date the registration certificate for Hasan Aziz was supposedly issued.

`I was shocked to see that, because Syed Ehtram Ali lef t PMDC in 2001, but there was his signature on a certificate supposedly from2011,` he said.

In order to verify the certiñcate, the ofñcial said that PMDC staff checked its registration number. He said that the registration number 15609-P was actually allotted to a Dr Amjad Iqbal, from Lahore.

`It is upsetting that someone with forged documents was a faculty member teaching actual medical students. How will those students ever serve the country,` the official lamented.

Current PMDC registrar Dr Shaista Faisal confirmed that the matter had been brought to her attention.

`The college representative demanded that the documents be returned, but I told him that a case would now be registered against the `fake` doctor and that an explanation will be sought from the college administration over how he was appointed as a faculty member at the college,` Dr Faisal said.

`It seems like the faculty member has beenteaching for years, because the certificate states that the doctor graduated in 1987. One requires at least three years of experience to become an assistant professor, so we will inquire into where he taught before this,` she added.

`PMDC will file cases against the doctor in Islamabad and in Karachi,` she said, adding that this was the first time that a faculty member had been found guilty of using forged documents.

However, the faculty member in question told Dawn that his documents were not bogus.

`There must be a typographical error, because the college sends many documents. I have the original certificate and will submit it to the PMDC so that the issue is not taken seriously unecessarily,` Aziz said.

When contacted, PBQMDC principal Prof Tariq Sharafat Ullah said the college administration had had is doubts regarding the faculty member.