Fake Covid report of 1 lakh people in Kumbh; investigation revealed

Explain that after the Uttarakhand High Court directed to conduct at least 50,000 Covid tests daily during the Kumbh, eight more sample collector agencies were entrusted with the task of testing

Ground Report | New Delhi: The Haridwar district administration has ordered a probe into allegations that fake COVID reports were issued by private laboratories set up by the Uttarakhand government to conduct tests during the Kumbh Mela. One of the largest religious gatherings in the world, the Kumbh was held in the state from April 1 to 30, and the notified Kumbh area included various locations in Haridwar, Dehradun, and Tehri districts.

According to the Times of India, an investigation report has revealed that a private agency had issued at least one lakh fake reports in such a huge investigation for the corona testing conducted by the Uttarakhand government during the Kumbh Mela. The Haridwar district administration has now ordered a probe into allegations that fake reports were issued by private labs engaged in conducting corona testing during the Kumbh festival in Haridwar.

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The biggest fraud is that 530 samples were taken from the same house. An official associated with the investigation said, “The addresses and names were fake. Around 530 samples were taken from 'house number 5' in Haridwar itself. Can more than 500 people live in a single house?" He said that the phone numbers were also fake and people from Kanpur, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and 18 other places shared the same phone numbers.

It was also told that about 200 sample collectors registered with the agency turned out to be students and data entry operators or residents of Rajasthan, who had never visited Haridwar. A sample collector has to be physically present to collect the sample. “When we contacted the sample collectors registered with the agency, we found that 50 percent of them were residents of Rajasthan, many of whom were students or data entry operators,” said an officer.

Explain that after the Uttarakhand High Court directed to conduct at least 50,000 Covid tests daily during the Kumbh, eight more sample collector agencies were entrusted with the task of testing. Under the investigation, out of 1 lakh, corona tests done by the agency, 177 positives were found with a positivity rate of 0.18 percent. In contrast, in April, the positivity rate in Haridwar had gone up to 10 percent.

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The matter of this fraud came to the fore when a person from Punjab who had not gone to Kumbh got a negative report of Covid from the Health Department of Haridwar on his phone. He lodged a complaint with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICAR), which alerted the state authorities. The agency was paid over Rs 350 for one test, which means the scam ran into crores.

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