Police in Kanpur are looking for a dentist who allegedly used to perform hair transplantation without the required qualification, resulting in the death of at least two patients within a few days of surgery.

Dr Anushka Tiwari, 35, absconded after the police filed a case against her two days ago. An initial probe has revealed that she had completed Bachelor’s in Dental Surgery but had no formal training in hair transplantation.

The matter came to light when Jaya Dubey, wife of victim Vineet Dubey, approached senior police officers to request them to take action against Tiwari.

Dinesh Tripathi, deputy commissioner of police, Kanpur West, said: “We have found during our inquiry that she (Tiwari) had done BDS from a college in Faridabad, Haryana. She was committing a crime by performing hair transplantation surgeries. Our teams are trying to arrest her.”

Hair transplant surgeons typically have an MBBS degree and specialisation in either dermatology or plastic surgery.

The complainant was quoted as saying that Tiwari had put up a board at her clinic identifying herself as a hair transplant surgeon and a dentist.

“She had discharged my husband after his hair transplant a few days ago. Since then, he had had a severe headache. She suggested we take him to another doctor, but he died,” Jaya was quoted as saying to the police.

Vineet was an engineer at Panki Power House in Kanpur.

Before him, Mayank Katiyar, an engineer in the public works department in Farrukhabad, had died a few days after undergoing a hair transplant surgery under Tiwari.

Most hair transplant surgeons in Kanpur and Lucknow charge anything between ₹1 lakh and ₹3 lakh, but Tiwari used to take ₹40,000. While other surgeons do hair transplants in patches over several months, she used to do it in one sitting of five hours at her centre named “Empire Clinic”. The tag line of her clinic read: “Get back your confidence: Hair Dental Aesthetics.”

“She had run away after locking her house when we reached there. We have formed teams to locate her and arrest her as soon as possible,” Tripathi said.