Dhaka, July 12: Police have arrested JKG Health Care Chairman Dr Sabrina Arif Chowdhury over her suspected involvement in the recently discovered Covid-19 testing scam in Dhaka.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) Tejgaon Division Deputy Commissioner Harun-or-Rashid confirmed of the development on Sunday afternoon.
“She [Dr Sabrina] has been shown arrested. We will interrogate her,” he said.
Earlier, on June 24, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) had cancelled all approvals it had given to JKG Health Care to collect Covid-19 samples.
The order was issued a day after police arrested three officials of JKG Health Care, including the organization’s CEO Ariful Chowdhury, and two others for giving fake Covid-19 test reports to people who provided samples in their facility.
Later, a case was filed over the matter. Dr Sabrina was shown arrested in this case.
According to the DGHS order, JKG Health Care received sample collection approval on April 6, while it took till April 16 to receive all other necessary permissions for setting up kiosks and arranging training from the health directorate.
Several times, people who went to their kiosks to give samples alleged that there were middlemen at the booths who would collect their contact information and send them back to their home without taking samples.
Later someone from the organization would contact them and offer to collect the samples from their home for Tk5,000 to Tk8,000.
It also took three to six days to give results of the test as they were submitting more than double the samples to the labs in violation of what they were asked to collect per day.
They were so reckless that they even misbehaved with the DGHS officials in front of the directorate general (DG) of DGHS.
As their corruption was unearthed by media reports, the DG himself on June 23 asked the NGO to collect a limited amount of samples that were permitted to them.
In a statement issued on Saturday, DGHS had also responded to the issue of JKG Health Care.
Ariful Chowdhury, who is also the organization’s chief coordinator, owns Oval Group, an event management company that worked for the Health Ministry in 2018, it said. After the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, Ariful proposed the DGHS to train volunteers and set up sample collecting booths.
According to the DGHS statement, the proposal looked good and received its nod at a time when it was crucial for the country to increase the testing capacity.❑
