Five arrested for selling fake negative Covid certificates to positive fliers from abroad

The accused are employees of the Acu-MDx laboratories, entrusted with the work of handing over printouts of the reports to the passengers after collecting their blood sample to be tested in their lab at Ghatkopar

Mumbai: Five men were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly selling negative Covid-19 reports to positive fliers arriving from abroad.

Police officers said that on February 9 they had received information that a scam was underway at the airport where Covid-19 positive passengers were given negative reports for ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 by the accused. (Stock Pic)

The accused are employees of the Acu-MDx laboratories, entrusted with the work of handing over printouts of the reports to the passengers after collecting their blood sample to be tested in their lab at Ghatkopar.

The lab has been given a contract by the airport authority to conduct random RT-PCR tests on passengers who are flying to India from various locations abroad, especially South Africa and the Gulf countries.

The contract was given to the lab in February 2021. The police officers said that the lab has four branches in Kota, Mumbai, Jodhpur and Delhi.

According to the Sahar police officers, the five accused have been identified as Rupesh Chaudhari, Sunny Singh, Pawan Mallaha, Shubham Mane and Rahul Gurav who were assigned the work of getting the samples of the passenger for ₹1,975 and send it to Ghatkopar lab through a carrier.

Within three hours, the men used to receive the report from the lab and hand it over to the passenger. The police said that two more men are wanted in the scam which was unearthed after a watch of five days.

Police officers said that on February 9 they had received information that a scam was underway at the airport where Covid-19 positive passengers were given negative reports for ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 by the accused. Officers said that after they received a tip-off, they kept a watch on the suspects, and they were caught in the fake negative RT-PCR test scam.

The officer from Sahar police station said that looking at the severity of the case, we informed the in-charge of the lab on February 10 after which he lodged the complaint.

“The accused were arrested under sections 269, 34, 420, 465, 468, 469, 471, 475 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for cheating, forgery. The five were presented before the court on Wednesday where they were remanded to police custody for four days,” said a police officer from Sahar police station.