CUTTACK: A day after 17,000 tablets of counterfeit Favipiravir, a drug recommended for treatment of Covid-19 were seized from a wholesaler in the city, an alleged fake testing racket was busted by Markat Nagar police here on Saturday.
The police arrested a laboratory technician, Ganesh Kumar Pradhan (38) of Kunjabana in Nayagarh district who works at a private hospital here and stays at CDA.
Ganesh was apprehended basing on a complaint filed by a resident of CDA Sector 7 locality, who had fallen victim to the racket.
Police said the complainant in his FIR had alleged that his sister-in-law had developed Covid symptoms around 10-12 days back following which he approached Ganesh for testing.
Ganesh used to assist locals in conducting pathological tests through a Bhubaneswar-based private laboratory.
The accused collected the swab sample of the woman and handed over the test report to her family after two days.
As per the report, she had tested negative for the virus.
Assured that she was not infected, the woman did not isolate herself and mingled with her family as a result of which four of them too showed Covid symptoms within a week.
Suspecting foul play, the family members of the woman contacted the Bhubaneswar-based pathological laboratory-DNA Life Science Private Limited which refused to have conducted the test.
All of them then got themselves tested at a government facility and to their surprise the results showed they were positive.
The complainant, who had also tested positive, then filed an FIR in this regard with Markat Nagar police station seeking action against Ganesh.
“Acting on the FIR, we conducted an investigation and arrested the accused Ganesh Pradhan. During investigation, it was ascertained that Ganesh had sent the swab sample through one Sanjay who had identified himself as an agent of the concerned private diagnostic facility,” said Markat Nagar IIC Beauty Mohanty.
It is suspected that a racket may be involved in conducting fake Covid tests and efforts are on to nab its other members, said Beauty.