Quack killing: They say he was driven to it

All this is “irrelevant,” says SHO, Sultanpuri, Jagbir SIngh Malik. “Even if Jaswant Singh ran an abortion clinic on the sly, does that give Manoj the licence to kill?” Certainly not, and with his name already in the police blotterfor a credit card theftManoj’s case has few defenders.

Still, according to his friends and neighbours, Manoj was driven to murder because of his wife’s death caused by two quacks.

Manoj and Asha had been married for two years and went to Goyal, the neighbourhood “doctor” in 1997. Goyal claims to have a BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine) and is a general surgeon according to his brother-in-law Bhagwan Das. But the police say he does not have any degree.

Goyal referred the case to Jaswant Singh who ran Om Jus Hospital in neighbouring Sultanpuri. His signboard displays his qualifications: MBBS (H), NBBS and BAMS (Final). He ran the hospital, assisted by compounder Ranjit Lal and his wife. The names of two doctors are mentioned on the board. But neighbours say they were never seen there.

According to Indian Medical Association president Prem Agarwal, the two were quacks. MBBS (H) means a homoeo degree, NBBS means a degree in naturopathy in their terminology. There are no such degrees, Agarwal says.

Mangolpuri SHO R.P.Gautam says between them, the two “doctors” seemed to have given the man false hopes and charged him lots of money. The neighbours say they were told that Asha was pregnant.“In fact her stomach swelled. But after nine months, it turned out that what she was carrying was not a child but some lump,” says one of them.

In August 1998, she was taken to the Jaswant Singh’s Hospital for a surgery. When she was in hospital, Manoj was caught by police in Karol Bagh after a jeweller alerted them of a man buying old on a stolen card. The neighbours allege that the wound got septic after surgery and that killed her.

Munna Lal, a shopkeeper, says Asha went to Goyal’s clinic two days before she died begging for medicine. “But the doctor refused to treat her, it was too late,” he says.

Munna Lal was witness to the incident on January 10 too. “And six months later her husband came here. I was sitting right there in the clinic. You can write down my name,” he says. “The doctor asked him how his wife was and the man just shot him in the neck and ran off,” he says.Fifteen minutes before that he had shot Jaswant Singh.

Police say Manoj is a “maniac.” If it was “genuine sorrow,” then what was he doing for six months after his wife died in August, asks SHO Malik. “He remained locked up in his house like a bairagi for six months after Asha’s death,” neighbours say.

The police are making no attempt to find out the medical history of Asha. “It is irrelevant,” says SHO Malik.