Regent Group boss Shahed Karim alias Md Shahed is still at large, a week after law enforcers sealed off two branches of Regent Hospital and the group’s offices in capital Dhaka on charges of issuing fake Covid-19 test reports.
The Rapid Action Battalion, which raided the hospital’s Uttara and Mirpur branches on July 6, said the private medical facilities have issued over than 10,000 Covid-19 test reports.
Of which, some 4,000 reports were issued after testing samples at different government labs while the rest were never sent to labs and fake test reports were delivered to patients, according to the elite police unit.
Regent Hospital also charged for tests and treatment of Covid-19 patients, violating the agreement it signed with the government’s health directorate.
Following the raids, RAB started a case against him and 16 others with the Uttara West Police Station in Dhaka on July 7. So far, nine of the suspect have been arrested.
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Law enforces have launched a manhunt for Shahed since then but is yet to track him down, triggering speculations that he might have fled the country.
The RAB, however, says they have ratcheted up intelligence operations in coordination with other agencies to hunt him down.
“We have already confiscated Shahed’s passport. All concerned, including the immigration police, have been informed so that he is not allowed to leave the country,” its Director for Legal and Media wing Ashik Billah told Dhaka Tribune.
Shahed, who hails from the southern district of Satkhira, had sneaked his way into the circle of society's power brokers, all while keeping his shady business dealings and implication in dozens of fraud cases under wraps.
According to investigators, he is already named in 56 cases, mostly for cheque fraud and fund embezzlements, filed with different police stations.
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In a letter to the Bangladesh Police headquarters in 2016, the Home Ministry said that Shahed was a fraudster, who identified himself as an army officer and asked to take actions against him.
It said that Shahed was roaming freely despite being named in 32 fraudulence cases.
However, law-enforcers found that he has been implicated in 24 other cases, most of them on charges of fraud.
According to people familiar with the investigations, some of the cases allege Shahed of assaulting people, who he owed money to.
All of the cases, except for four in Sylhet, have been filed with different police stations in Dhaka, they said.
Meanwhile, a Dhaka court on Wednesday remanded seven Regent Hospital staffers for five days in the case started by RAB over fake Covid-19 test report.
The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) says they have gleaned “valuable information” from the suspects in remand.
“We are verifying those and hope to arrest Shahed very soon,” Deputy Commissioner for DMP’s Uttara Division Nabid Kamal Shaibal told Dhaka Tribune.
