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Former PMC health chief, two others booked for misappropriating Covid kits
The incident allegedly took place at the civic-run Arvind Bartakke Hospital, Warje, during the Covid-19 pandemic
The Pune city police have filed a first information report (FIR) against former Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) health chief and two others for their alleged involvement in the misappropriation of Covid-19 antigen test kit and other materials.
The accused have been identified as Dr Ashish Bharati, former head of civic health department, and medical officers Dr Rushikesh Hanumant Gardi, a resident of Warje and Dr Aruna Suryakant Tarade, a resident of Dapodi.
The incident allegedly took place at the civic-run Arvind Bartakke Hospital, Warje, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A complaint has been filed by Dr Satish Baburao Kolsure (42), medical officer of the Bartakke hospital at that time, resident of Pimple Gurav.
The complainant has alleged that in 2021, at Bartakke Hospital, the accused were involved in divesting Covid-19 materials like testing kits, medicines, sanitisers and other materials to private individuals and laboratories in order to gain personal benefits of ₹80- ₹90 lakh.
The accused also allegedly entered false Covid-19 testing data into the government record book and submitted fake records to the civic body.
Sunil Jaitapurkar, senior police inspector at Warje-Malwadi police station, said, “As per the complaint we have registered an FIR against the accused.
During the initial investigation, it was found that there are irregularities in Covid-19 testing materials.”
“We can share more details only after a detailed investigation,” he said.
Jaitapurkar said, a case was registered on Thursday night and no arrest has been made yet.
There have been allegations that during the pandemic, around 11,000 bogus patients were registered for antigen tests at Bartakke Hospital.
A primary investigation by Warje Malwadi police station estimated that ₹33 lakh was siphoned off from these illegal activities.
After the complaint was submitted, police carried out an initial probe and found that many patients who were tested were bogus. Police called some of the patients who are registered with PMC for testing.
Dr Kolsure in his complaint alleged that around 60 per cent kits of the 18,500 Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits at Bartakke Hospital’s swab centre were sold in the private market by registering over 11,000 bogus patients.
Dr Kolsure had approached the health department about the scam in December 2022.
To prevent SMS intimation to the patients, it was alleged that the centre’s doctors and staff registered their own phone numbers against the names of these patients.
During the investigation, Warje Police tried to contact 165 of them randomly. Out of that, only 18 confirmed their tests. As many as 37 could not be contacted, while nine patients did not pick up the phone.
Police have assumed that RATs of these 64 people are done, and on the basis of investigation, they’ve concluded that 101 bogus patients were registered.
Dr Kolsure informed that the RAT kits were sold in the range of ₹2,500 to ₹5,000.
Dr Bharati did not respond to calls and text messages despite several attempts.
