57-year-old man given false test report dies; three arrested in Kolkata

nKOLKATA: A 57-year-old bank manager who was given a false swab test report that declared him negative for Covid-19 died at a government hospital on Thursday after testing positive for the virus.

Kolkata Police have arrested three persons on a complaint lodged by the victim’s wife. The police are investigating whether the racketeers had duped anyone else with false reports.

“The swab test report had a handwritten Specimen Referral Form ID with only nine digits. In original reports it is typed and has 13 digits. It was a fake report,” said a senior doctor of MR Bangur Hospital, the largest state-run Covid-designated hospital in the city, requesting anonymity.

Police said that Bimal Sinha was suffering from fever and cough and cold. A family doctor referred him to a man who runs a pathological lab that could collect his samples from home because he was too weak to go out.

“When Sinha’s family contacted the laboratory, the owner sent one youth to collect his swab sample. on July 25. A day later, the family was told over phone that Sinha has tested negative,” said a senior officer at Netaji Nagar police station, requesting anonymity.

The man was rushed to a nursing home when his condition deteriorated. Later he was referred to MR Bangur Hospital, where doctors detected the discrepancies in the test report.

“The hospital doctors told us that the report was fake...my father succumbed on July 30 after testing positive in the government hospital... ,” said Harsh Sinha, the victim’s son.

Indrajit Sikdar, 26, and Biswajit Sikdar, 23, were arrested from south Kolkata.a third person Anit Paira, who runs a private laboratory, was also arrested.