Patel faces 3 years in jail, if convicted.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: An Indian American obstetrician in Oklahoma, Dr. Nareshkumar G. Patel, 62, was arrested on charges of fraud, telling women they were pregnant when they weren’t and then giving them abortion-inducing drugs.
Patel was arrested Tuesday at his Warr Acres clinic. The arrest was the result of an undercover operation involving three female investigators who posed as patients, reported The Oklahoman.
Patel has been the center of controversy repeatedly since getting his medical license in Oklahoma in May 1984. In the most notorious incident, he burned 55 aborted fetuses in 1992 in a field east of Shawnee. He was investigated over the incident but never charged. He admitted burning aborted fetuses, saying he had run out of storage space after a hospital stopped letting him use an incinerator.
Warr Acres police officers led Patel in handcuffs from his clinic, Outpatient Services for Women, shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday. Officials placed a sign on the door stating: “Clinic Closed.”
“This type of fraudulent activity and blatant disregard for the health and well-being of Oklahoma women will not be tolerated,” Attorney General Scott Pruitt said after Patel’s arrest. “Oklahoma women should be able to trust that the advice they receive from their physicians is truthful, accurate and does not jeopardize their health.”
Prosecutors said Patel will be charged with three counts of obtaining money under a false pretense. If convicted of all three counts, he could be sentenced up to three years in jail.
The undercover operation began June 4 when an investigator from the state medical licensure board went to the clinic, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. An Oklahoma City police detective visited the clinic October 16 and an Oklahoma attorney general agent visited the clinic October 22. All three women were not pregnant, said the Oklahoman.
Each time, Patel gave the woman an ultrasound, told her she was pregnant and gave her five RU-486 pills to induce an abortion, according to the affidavit. Each paid $620 for the unnecessary procedure, according to the affidavit.
The complaint that led to the investigation came from a sister of a former patient who paid $520 for a medical abortion procedure in August 2011. The former patient, Pamela Michelle King, died four months later of complications from cervical cancer. The doctor who cared for her at the time of her death reported she had not been pregnant within the past year.
Patel lives in a $3.8 million home in north Oklahoma City, records show. Investigators were searching both his home and clinic Tuesday, the attorney general’s office said.
Patel went to medical school in India before moving to the United States in 1978. “Over there,” he said in a 1990 deposition, “doctors are considered as God.”
He had further medical training at a New Jersey hospital before moving to Oklahoma in 1984. He first began his obstetrics and gynecology practice in Shawnee.
Patel has been arrested before — in 1993 when a patient accused him of sexually assaulting her. He denied her accusation. He was acquitted of two felony counts at a jury trial in 1994.