Michigan Renewed FGM Doctor's Medical License Through 2029
Medical board supports FGM doctor.
Michigan renewed the medical license of Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, the physician charged in America’s first federal FGM prosecution, through 2029 in seven minutes, with no human review, no screening of her complaint history, and no reference to the federal case or the cutting allegations anywhere in the renewal record.
Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that Nagarwala submitted her renewal application on April 14, 2026 at 12:53 PM. By 1:00 PM, the system had emailed her a confirmation.
The production contained only what Nagarwala submitted and the automated system emails. Nothing in the record indicates anyone at the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs looked at Nagarwala’s file before extending her license by three years.
Her license number (4301071795) now shows an expiration date of June 19, 2029 in the state’s public licensing database. When this publication first reported on Nagarwala’s license status in January 2026, the same database showed an expiration of June 19, 2026. Her previous medical license is archived here and the new medical license is archived here.
LARA has at least four complaint files on this physician:
The original civil investigation (43-XX-146153), which the agency closed in September 2018 with the disposition “No Action Taken” two months before the federal charges were even dismissed.
The criminal monitoring file (146169), opened to track the federal prosecution.
A 2019 complaint from a physician who called Nagarwala’s practice of genital cutting on children without anesthesia “torture,” which LARA dismissed by citing the monitoring file rather than the closed investigation.
A 2025 patient complaint filed against Nagarwala by a patient she treated at GCH Westland Emergency Room.
LARA renewed Nagarwala’s license anyway.
The renewal application asks two good moral character questions. Both ask only about convictions not previously reported to the department. Since the federal case against Nagarwala was dismissed on constitutional grounds, Nagarwala was not required to disclose her history with FGM or the previous federal case against her.
The form does not ask about criminal charges, indictments, arrests, or investigations, open or closed, by this department. The sanctions question asks only whether another state or country has imposed sanctions. Michigan’s own history with the licensee is structurally invisible on its own renewal form.
A patient complaint filed in 2025 alleged Nagarwala improperly administered a drug injection at GCH Westland Emergency Room. Her controlled substance license was also renewed.
The renewal took place during a period when LARA’s own communications director had personally responded to this publication’s questions about whether the agency made false statements to Medscape about the status of the investigations, breaking a months-long pattern of silence across multiple published articles. The agency’s Director of Legal Affairs had been CC’d on correspondence from a Board of Medicine reviewer who treated the inquiry as a legal exposure question. FOIA requests targeting internal communications about the case were active and pending response.
None of that stopped the renewal.
Nagarwala was charged in April 2017 with performing genital cutting on young girls at a Livonia clinic, in what federal prosecutors called the first FGM case in U.S. history. The FBI identified nine victims between the ages of seven and thirteen from Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois. Prosecutors estimated as many as 100 girls may have been cut over a twelve-year period. The federal case ended in November 2018 after U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled the federal FGM statute unconstitutional. No party in the case disputed that the procedures occurred.
Michigan’s Board of Medicine authorized an investigation days after the federal arrest. Internal emails show LARA staff requested a summary suspension and administrative complaint. Neither was executed. Michigan never held hearings on her license. The state closed its investigation with “No Action Taken,” and the closure memo, authored by Assistant Attorney General Bridget K. Smith and addressed to then-Bureau of Professional Licensing Director Cheryl Wykoff Pezon, remains withheld in full under attorney-client privilege.
Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, who owned the Livonia clinic where prosecutors alleged the procedures took place, also holds an active, unrestricted medical license (No. 4301067384). His clinic is still open and his license does not expire until March 2027. As previously reported, LARA never assigned an investigator to his case and certified that “a traditional investigation was not conducted.”
No medical organization contacted for this investigation was willing to say that a physician who performed genital cutting on children should lose their medical license.
This is an ongoing investigation. If you’d like to support this work, you can contribute here: Expose Medical Board for Licensing an FGM Doctor.