Two men who treated patients over a long period while presenting themselves as doctors have been given six-month prison sentences, suspended for five years, by the Kalutara Additional Magistrate.
Both pleaded guilty to fraud. The court also fined each of them Rs. 50,000.
One is a resident of the Beruwala area and the other of Kalmunai. They had been operating patient treatment centres in the Dharga Town area of Aluthgama.
The investigation
The pair were arrested during an operation conducted by the National Institute of Health Sciences in Kalutara. The investigation established that they were practising medicine without being registered with the Sri Lanka Medical Council.
Registration with the council is the legal precondition for practising western medicine in Sri Lanka. Unregistered practice is prosecuted as fraud where patients have been charged for treatment, which is the basis on which these convictions were entered.
Context
Enforcement against unregistered practitioners has been intermittent, and cases typically surface only when a health authority mounts a targeted operation rather than through routine inspection. Suspended sentences are a common outcome where defendants plead guilty and have no previous convictions.
Hiru News did not name either defendant, give the period over which the two had been treating patients, or say how many people had been seen at the two centres. It also did not report whether the Sri Lanka Medical Council or the Health Ministry intends any further action, or what has become of the treatment centres.
At the time of writing, on Sunday night, no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own report of the sentencing.
