Ahmedabad, Jul 1 (PTI) As many as 15 doctors allegedly misappropriated Rs 1.87 crore generated from clinical trials at a civic hospital in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, a senior official probing into the irregularities said on Tuesday. Talking to PTI, the official said that instead of obtaining consent from competent authorities, the doctors altered financial distribution clauses in the agreements to take all the money, while the civic-run VS Hospital received a small sum from 58 clinical trials conducted over four years. Also Read | Fraudulent Website sarvashikshaabhiyan.com Makes Fake Job Offers, Claiming To Be Official Website of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, PIB Fact Check Reveals Truth. The official is part of a five-member inquiry panel formed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) in April to probe into allegations of irregularities in the income generated from clinical trials at VS Hospital between 2021 and 2025. The probe panel recently submitted its final report to the civic body. Based on a preliminary inquiry in April, the AMC terminated the contracts of eight doctors and suspended a doctor who was an associate professor of the civic body-run medical college. Also Read | Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin Apologises for Death of 29 Year-Old Sivaganga Man in Custody, Promises Stringent Action. “As many as 15 doctors associated with VS Hospital diverted Rs 1.87 crore into their personal bank accounts since 2021. Of these doctors, one has been suspended, eight were terminated, one already retired, and five left the job before the probe began,” said a senior official of the AMC Medical Education Trust (MET). He said recovery notices were served to these doctors, and four of them have already deposited Rs 6 lakh. The official said that the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) had also conducted a parallel probe and noted in its report that administrative and financial rules and regulations were not followed during the clinical trials. “Ideally, all the money should first come into the hospital’s bank account and then be disbursed to doctors and others as per the set rules. Instead, the doctors created their own rules and asked site management organisations, working as mediators between hospital and pharma firms, to directly deposit money into personal accounts,” he said. Of the 65 clinical trial agreements signed by these doctors since 2021, trials had culminated in 48 agreements, and 10 were underway at the time of the probe, while seven agreements were cancelled or never commenced. According to the official, the AMC did not find any substance in the allegation that some patients lost their lives during the trials. The civic body had initiated an inquiry after Congress corporator Rajshree Kesari in April alleged that three patients died at VS Hospital in four years due to illegal clinical trials. Kesari had claimed that although 500 patients underwent clinical trials at the hospital in four years, the head of the clinical trial department, Dr Devang Rana, and others siphoned off the fee amount from four pharmaceutical companies. Following a preliminary probe, the AMC suspended Dr Rana and terminated the contracts of eight other doctors who were part of the clinical trial team. Dr Rana, an MD, served as an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology at NHL Municipal Medical College and was appointed head of clinical trials in VS Hospital in 2021. The hospital’s superintendent, Dr Parul Shah, had claimed in April that clinical trials had been permanently stopped in December 2024 after the hospital management learnt about the irregularities. Instead of forming an official Ethics Committee as mandated by law, Dr Rana and the then superintendent of the hospital, Dr Manish Patel, had created a committee of doctors and started conducting clinical trials, she said. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)