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Police ready to press formal charges against JKG’s Sabrina, Ariful over Covid-19 scam

| Updated: August 05, 2020 20:26:58


Police ready to press formal charges against JKG’s Sabrina, Ariful over Covid-19 scam

Detective police are set to press formal charges against Dr Sabrina Arif Chaudhury and her husband Ariful Chaudhary over their alleged links with a Covid-19 test scam involving JKG Health Care.

Six others are also implicated in the case against JKG for issuing false reports without testing the swabs collected from suspected coronavirus patients.

Police have prepared the charge-sheet after investigating the case for nearly one and a half months, Golam Mustafa Russel, deputy commissioner of the detective police's Tejgaon Division, said on Wednesday, bdnews24.com reported.

"We will submit the charge-sheet to the court at some point today."

Apart from JKG's CEO Ariful and Chairman Sabrina, also a government cardiac surgeon, the other suspects in the case include Ariful's sister Jebunnesa Rima and its Executive Shafiqul Islam. Humayun Kabir Hiru, a graphic designer and former employee of JKG, and his wife Tanzina Patwari were also arrested in connection with the case.

After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Bangladesh, JKG Health Care, a sister concern of Oval Group, began collecting samples to run Covid-19 tests with the permission of the health directorate.

But towards the end of June, allegations began to surface that JKG was charging money through two websites, BD Booking and Healthcare, for the tests despite taking the government's approval to conduct them free of cost while issuing fake reports.

Police arrested Humayun Kabir Hiru, a former graphic designer of JKG Health Care, and his wife Tanjin Patwari, on Jun 22 after finding substance in the complaint made by Kamal Hossain, a caretaker of a house in the capital's Kalyanpur.

Later, police retrieved fake reports of coronavirus tests made in the names of 43 people, including four expatriates, from their computers.

The next day, Kamal Hossain as plaintiff started a case against two people with Tejgaon police.

Police later arrested Ariful, his sister Jebunnesa and five others. Dr Sabrina, also a cardiac surgeon of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, was arrested on Jul 12.

The Detective Branch of police later took over the investigation duties on Jul 13. Ariful and Sabrina were twice remanded for questioning.

Although media reports introduced her as the chairman of JKG Health Care, Sabrina denied ever holding the position.

Despite her denials, detective police recovered three payment slips which showed that she had been drawing her monthly salary as the chairman of the organisation.

Sabrina was also suspended by the health ministry for violating service rules by holding the post of chairman in a private organisation without permission.

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