BMC Covid centre irregularities: Police question Aaditya Thackeray’s aide Suraj Chavan

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police on Monday questioned Shiv Sena (UBT) functionary and Aaditya Thackeray’s aide Suraj Chavan for around five hours in connection with the alleged irregularities in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) jumbo Covid centres

MUMBAI: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police on Monday questioned Shiv Sena (UBT) functionary and Aaditya Thackeray’s aide Suraj Chavan for around five hours in connection with the alleged irregularities in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) jumbo Covid centres.

Mumbai, India – June 26, 2023: Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Suraj Chavan arrives to appear before the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in BMC COVID scam case, at Ballard Pier, in Mumbai, India, on Monday, June 26, 2023. (Photo by Bhushan Koyande/HT Photo) (Hindustan Times)

The EOW officials said that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) recently handed over some documents to them after which they decided to question Chavan.

On June 26, the ED had questioned Chavan for over eight hours in connection with the alleged irregularities in the BMC’s ₹4,000-crore expenditure on the Covid-19 pandemic-related contracts.

Chavan was questioned by the ED about allegations that he had influenced the award of civic contracts to contractors/suppliers of his choice. The ED was also examining the role of five middlemen who allegedly influenced contract conditions to suit their favoured suppliers.

An EOW official said, “We required certain explanations that Chavan gave us. We will now verify what he has told us.”

On Wednesday, the ED had arrested businessman Sujit Patkar, one of the four partners of the firm Lifeline Hospital Management Services (LHMS) which bagged a ₹38-crore civic contract to supply medical manpower to the jumbo Covid centres in Worli and Dahisar during the pandemic.

A senior BMC health official, Dr Kishore Bisure, who headed the civic medical team at the Dahisar centre was also arrested in connection with the ED’s money-laundering probe into the alleged irregularities.

An FIR was registered by the Azad Maidan police in August 2022 against the partners of LHMS. According to the FIR, the company got the contract using forged documents and had no previous experience of providing manpower for any medical facility.

The money trail in the civic contract to LHMS has been established, which revealed that up to ₹22 crore of the ₹30 crore that the BMC gave to it had been diverted and not used for the stated purposes. The probe revealed that out of the ₹22 crore, some parts went to the firm’s partners as deemed profits, while the rest was sent to what we suspect are shell entities the ED had found.

After investigations into the LHMS case yielded allegedly incriminating results, the ED a few days ago widened the scope of its money-laundering investigation into the jumbo Covid centres scam and brought the BMC’s entire ₹4,000-crore expenditure on pandemic-related contracts under its scanner.