Mumbai Police arrests a doctor couple for ‘selling’ vaccines in black

Kandivali police have arrested a doctor couple— 62-year-old Shivraj Pataria and his wife Nita— that runs Shivam Hospital at Charkop for allegedly supplying ‘unutilized’ or ‘leftover’ vials of Covid-19 vaccines for unauthorized camps organized at Hiranandani Heritage housing society in Kandivali and other places.

So far 10 people have been arrested in the Kandivali vaccination scam case. It has come to light about the supply of vaccine doses from Shivam Hospital, in which 2 people of the hospital have been arrested. Till Thursday, FIRs against 7 people were registered. The investigation has revealed the involvement of the same racket in organizing all the 9 camps of vaccination. Nevertheless, there is no evidence with the police about whether the vaccine given is adulterated or not.

Mumbai Police in its investigation found out that Shivam hospital got vials from BMC before 30th April as the hospital had the vaccination permission only till April 2021 not beyond that. According to the Kandivali police officers, during the vaccination camp, the hospital saved some of the allotted vials. The remaining dose was then stored separately. Some had the vaccine in it and some were empty. And these vials were given by Shivam hospital to the accused who later administered these vials to Hiranandani housing society residents.

Before this, by Thursday afternoon, Bhoiwada police made two arrests. Accused Seema and Shrikant allegedly helped Mahindra Pratap Singh to conduct an unauthorized vaccination camp at Poddar Education Institute where 207 people were given the jab on 28th and 29th May.

Meanwhile, 12 lakh 40 thousand have been seized from the accused. And the accounts of the main accused were sealed.

SIT has been constituted to investigate the fraud case in the name of vaccination under the observation of DCP Vishal Thakur. Mumbai Police have, for the first time, charged members of the bogus vaccination camp group with a section of an attempt to commit culpable homicide not amounting to murder in the Bhoiwada police FIR. According to the statement of a witness so far, saline water can be there.

390 people in the society took the jab and later found out that around 120 of them were given fake certificates and the rest didn’t get even those. Since then, Mumbai police have filed 7 FIRs, made 10 arrests, and are looking for two accused.

The scam surfaced more than 10 days ago when the residents of Kandivali’s posh housing society, Hiranandani society approached the cops and alleged that they were cheated in the name of inoculation.