Adarsh Nagar ‘lab’ operated out of derelict room, used 2,500 templates to forge results
NEW DELHI: A dilapidated room with no plaster on its front wall, a rusted locked door and a shaky metallic ladder to gain access to the lab on the first floor. The reality of recently busted Unicare Path Lab in Delhi’s Adarsh Nagar is in stark contrast to what is claimed on the website.
The lab was sealed last week after two men, who ran the lab,were arrested for issuing at least 23,000 bogus test reports for around a year. Police said the two men Ajay Yadav and Sanjay Yadav had prepared set templates of around 2,500 lab tests and handed it to clients without conducting a single test.
Photographs of uniformed professionals,mostly foreigners, performing tests using state-of-theart lab equipments adorn the website of the lab. However, in reality the lab — supposedly run from the run-down room — did not have a single equipment. Claiming to have three decades of experience, the website says the lab was started ‘with an objective to provide quality services in laboratory medicine.’
Police said the two men managed to convinced bigger laboratories to outsource their test by claiming to have some of the best equipments, which even the top labs did not possess. “Since, they never conducted any tests, they pocked all the money they charged from their clients (bigger labs). They did not have to shell out much on rent and hired a couple of technicians at a monthly salary of Rs 10,000,” said DCP (north west) Aslam Khan summing up the wide gap between the ‘massive earnings and modest expenditure.’
Police said for tests such as thyroid, haemoglobin and allergy they charged the client lab anywhere between Rs 1,600 and 1,800.
For those living in the area, the news of the bogus lab has come as a surprise. Aalam Khan who runs a food shop in the same area said, “There wasn’t much activity in the building. None of us had an idea that such a huge racket was being run from there. This is like a murder as a wrong diagnosis may cost people their lives.”
Khan said that usually a man and a woman were regular visitors at the lab.
“They opened around 9am everyday and would close by 9 in the evening.” Police said the man and the woman were technicians who were kept at the lab to answer queries in case anyone came knocking on the door.
Locals said the lab was built on the terrace of a welding shop opposite Azadpur wholesale market’s Gate number 5 nearly a year and a half ago. DCP Khan said that though the accused men did not have any ground infrastructure, they approached the clients through phone or email and convinced them to send samples.