The mystery surrounding what experts are calling the largest Covid-testing scam in India is beginning to unravel, TOI has reported.?As per the report, a Punjab LIC agent's investigation has blown the lid off a con act the possibility of which had first piqued people's interest after tests at this year's Kumbh returned suspiciously low positivity numbers.
This comes as the Uttarakhand government directed the Haridwar district administration to register a case against private laboratories engaged by the state government to conduct tests during the Kumbh Mela.?
The unravelling began when Vipan Mittal, an LIC agent from Faridkot who received his ¡®test report¡¯ via a text message. The report, though negative, came as a shock to him as he had not got tested for the virus.
According to a local report, the LIC agent, initially thought that someone had gotten their hands on his private data and was now misusing it. So he first approached the local authorities but was turned away.
After the health department officers also showed little interest in his case, he went ahead and filed a complaint with ICMR. The ICMR took note of Mittal¡¯s case, but when several days passed and little action happened, he eventually filed an RTI plea to find out what the case really was.
Thereafter, the matter picked up pace and a probe found that the lab that supposedly carried out Mittal¡¯s Covid test was located at Haridwar.
A News18 investigation then found that a firm hired for conducting Covid tests during the Kumbh congregation in Haridwar remains only on papers. The laboratories hired by the firm in question allegedly conducted thousands of fake Covid tests.
Mittal at first never thought the scam could be this huge. But after Uttarakhand's Health authorities were roped in and a large-scale investigation was carried out, it came to light that Mittal was just one case in about a lakh of bogus reports that were produced under a massive scam.
The probe report, running into as many as 1,600 pages, puts a Haryana agency at the centre of it all. The report says the "tests" were done during the Kumbh following a court order to carry out at least 50,000 tests daily in Haridwar.
Around four lakh tests had been carried out during the Kumbh on samples collected by eight agencies. All these agencies are under the lens now.Names and addresses against which test reports were issued were found to be fake.?
Many of the supposedly tested tested Kumbh visitors 'shared' the same phone number. The probe also showed multiple people registered against one single-use antigen test kit. The list of sample collectors was found to have names of people who never even went to the Kumbh.?
It may be recalled that the Covid positivity rate at the Kumbh venue had been found to be 2.8%, while the other Uttarakhand districts had reported 14.2% during the Mela period.?As per estimates, at least 70 lakh devotees attended the Maha Kumbh and the sharp surge in Covid infections in Uttarakhand and other parts of the country, thereafter, caused a huge uproar.?
The extraordinarily minuscule positive rate during tests conducted at the Kumbh had raised widespread doubts among experts. The test reports were highly questionable but the authorities chose to turn a blind eye, TOI quoted Anoop Nautiyal, member of Social Development for Communities Foundation, as saying.?
One of the world¡¯s largest religious gatherings, the Kumbh was held in the state from April 1 to 30, and the notified Kumbh area covered various places in Haridwar, Dehradun and Tehri districts.Three shahi snans took place during the event on April 12, 14 and 27.