Covid centre probe: ED confronts accused with each other

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is questioning multiple accused together to establish facts and accountability in its money laundering probe against a firm that received a ?38 crore contract to supply medical manpower to the BMC's Jumbo Covid Centres in Mumbai. The ED has found discrepancies in the contract and alleged diversion of funds to connected individuals and shell firms. The probe has been expanded to include other pandemic contracts worth ?4,000 crore awarded by the BMC.

MUMBAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has begun questioning multiple accused together to verify facts and fix accountability in its money laundering probe against a firm, which had bagged a ₹38-crore contract to supply medical manpower to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) Jumbo Covid Centres in Worli and Dahisar during the Covid pandemic, sources said.

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The agency resorted to questioning some of the accused together, which is referred to as making the accused ‘confront’ each other in the informal circles of investigators, after noticing that each one of them has been denying any role in the alleged wrongdoing, even as they allegedly pass the buck to others as far as verification is concerned, the sources said.

The firm, Lifeline Hospital Management Services (LHMS), is accused of receiving around ₹31.84 crore from the BMC as part of the manpower contract, even though between 50 and 60% of the medical staff at the centres for which it had billed the civic body were non-existent, as per ED findings. The agency has widened its probe scanner to include BMC’s ₹4,000-crore worth pandemic contracts.

The ED had last week arrested one of the accused, businessman Sujit Patkar, who is one of the four partners of the firm. “The four partners have so far denied their own roles in any irregularity, while placing the blame on others, including those under the scanner but not named in the predicate First Information Report,” a source said.

The ED case is based on an FIR registered by the Azad Maidan police in August 2022 against partners of LHMS. According to the FIR, the company had submitted forged documents to the BMC, and had no experience in providing manpower to a medical facility. However, the BMC awarded the company the contract. It was also alleged that the firm was unregistered, and the partnership deed submitted to the BMC was dubious.

The agency has also recorded a few fresh witness statements that corroborate the probe’s finding that there were allegedly huge discrepancies in the attendance sheets pertaining to doctors, nurses and staff and the documents submitted by the staff of LHMS, sources claimed. “The witness statements revealed how only half the number of doctors and medical staff of the actual requirement of the Covid centre were deployed, putting the life and well-being of patients in danger due to the inadequate doctor-to-patient ratio,” one of the sources said.