Mumbai society vax fraud: Hunt on for doctor who trained accused

Kandivli police are on the lookout for a doctor, who owns a nursing institute at Borivli, for allegedly training one of the men arrested in the Hiranandani Heritage society vaccination scam

Kandivli police are on the lookout for a doctor, who owns a nursing institute at Borivli, for allegedly training one of the men arrested in the Hiranandani Heritage society vaccination scam.

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The police had on Friday arrested five men for allegedly conducting an unauthorised vaccination camp at the society, located at Kandivli (West). One of the accused, Karim Ali, had revealed that the doctor had recruited him and other ward boys who had been working in the vaccination drive at hospitals and possessed the login IDs and passwords of the government portal for vaccine registration. According to the police, the doctor had asked Ali and others to approach societies and other organisations to conduct vaccination camps. After administering the vaccination, the accused used to feed the identification documents of the beneficiaries and print the certificates. “When we went to the institute owned by the doctor, we found it closed,” said a police officer.

After the society members of Hiranandani Heritage approached the police reporting about the vaccination scam, Aditya College located at Saibaba Nagar, Borivli (West), also lodged a complaint about a similar unauthorised drive on their campus. According to a statement issued by the college, on June 3, a vaccination camp was organised by an event management company, allegedly managed by Rajesh Pandey, chief manager (sales) of Kokilaben Hospital. Pandey had assured the college that the camp will be supervised by the hospital. He also said that the event management firm will organise the camp and procure all the necessary permissions and complete legal formalities and the college management will only have to make the payment.

The college decided to hold a vaccination camp for its students, staff and their family members as well as college trustees. However after the camp, when the management did not receive the certificates, they suspected foul play. They came across the vaccination scam at Hiranandani Heritage in the newspapers and approached Borivli police. Pandey had allegedly conducted the immunisation drive at Hiranandani Heritage too on May 30. He has now been suspended.