A team of the Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) visited the offices of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Wednesday to question departing DG Prof Abul Kalam Azad and Additional Director General Prof Nasima Sultana over the JKG Health Care's Covid-19 testing scam.
Golam Mostafa Russel, deputy commissioner (DC) of DB, who is supervising the case, confirmed the matter to Dhaka Tribune and said that a DB team had quizzed Nasima Sultana over the scam. The DG was not present at his office.
Sources said that DB had earlier contacted the DG and the ADG of Health Services in this regard. They had informed the DGHS that DB police would look into some documents regarding the approval given to JKG Health Care to collect Covid-19 samples. They were asked to keep those documents ready.
A team then went to the Mohakhali office of the DGHS and checked the documents. They also interrogated Nasima Sultana over the JKG Health Care scam for about an hour, the sources said.
Earlier, Abdul Baten, additional commissioner of DB, said that DB police would soon submit a charge-sheet to the court in a case lodged over the JKG Healthcare's Covid-19 test scam.
Azad resigned on Tuesday in the face of widespread criticism over massive irregularities in the country’s health sector, exposed one after another during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
DB investigators said that they had found significant evidence against JKG's convener Sabrina Arif Chowdhury and CEO Ariful Haque Chowdhury over their involvement in the scam.
JKG Health Care, run by Sabrina and her husband Ariful Haque Chowdhury, has bagged a huge amount of money from people by giving them false Covid-19 certificates without conducting tests. This was in violation of a deal the company had inked with the government to conduct the tests free of cost.
Police have seized over 15,000 false Covid-19 certificates from the laptops of JKG as the group had even been counterfeiting the signatures and seals of government agencies while manufacturing forged Covid-19 test reports and at the same time throwing away the samples taken from suspected patients.
The Anti-Corruption Commission is also probing Sabrina's illegal wealth.
Detectives have also found the involvement of some officials from the DGHS and the Health Ministry who helped in the contract signing.
