Mumbai: 6th Accused Held In Fake Negative COVID-19 Certificate Scam

In a major development, Mumbai Police on Monday, February 28, revealed that they arrested the sixth person in the fake negative COVID-19 certificate scam. According to officials, the accused was arrested on February 18.

The accused identified as Vitesh Ubale (23) was held by Sahar Police, who is probing the case of laboratory staffers issuing forged negative COVID-19 test reports to 100-plus international passengers who landed at Mumbai airport between February 2021 and January 2022.

On February 15, the city police busted the racket with the arrest of five staffers of the Laboratory and Research Center—Rupesh Chaudhari, Sunny Singh, Pawan Mallaha, Shubham Mane and Rahul Gurav—on a complaint by the laboratory owner, Ashok Kumar Garg.

Officials stated that the accused are employees of the Acu-MDx laboratories. As per narratives, they had the responsibility to submit the report’s printouts to the travellers after collecting their blood samples for testing at the lab in Ghatkopar.

The bank details of all six accused have been sought and their iPhones which they had bought with the money earned fraudulently, have been seized, said an official. He also mentioned that all six are graduates working in the field of pathology for a year.

Also Read: COVID-19: Fake Vaccination Certificate Gang Busted In Goregaon

Reports are doing the rounds that the lab was accorded the contract in February 2021, with officers from the police adding that the lab has four branches in locations that include Mumbai, Delhi, Jodhpur and Kota.

Police claimed that the six accused issued fake coronavirus negative certificates to passengers who tested positive so that they could avoid institutional quarantine and charged them INR 5,000-INR 10,000 over and above the test fees.

In addition, police are collecting information on the flyers who managed to skip the quarantine and are also probing other agencies, besides the laboratory, contracted to conduct tests at the airport.

Also Read: Thane: Police Busted A Gang Selling Fake COVID-19 Vaccine Certificates For ₹2000