In Haridwar testing probe, eight-member team calling 98,000 phone numbers to check status
HARIDWAR: 118,000 Covid-19 rapid antigen tests. 98,000 different phone numbers used to register patients in two labs. Just eight investigators to track down the people behind the numbers.
This is the scale of the task in front of officials probing allegations of mass fake testing during the Mahakumbh in April, prompting each of the eight members in the district administration’s team to dial roughly 450 numbers a day. Over the past week, the team has called up nearly 3,500 numbers a day, totaling about 25,000 -- only a fourth of the target.
Haridwar district magistrate C Ravishankar said he ordered the humongous task after allegations that phone numbers registered for Covid-19 tests belonged to people who never visited Haridwar or didn’t get tested.
“A week into this probe, I am convinced that irregularities occurred in the testing process. This process of calling up every phone number and seeking their response will help establish the crime and the extent of it,” said Ravishankar. “In the one week we have so far managed to dial 25,000 phone numbers and received a host of varied responses,” he added.
The district administration’s probe is one of three looking into charges that two private labs – Delhi-based Lalchandani Labs and Hisar-based Nalwa Labs – conducted roughly 100,000 fake tests during the holy event. A third, Noida-based private agency Max Corporate Services, outsourced the testing. The allegations were triggered after a Faridkot resident complained to the authorities that he received a message for collecting his Covid-19 report despite never having been tested. All three firms have been booked by police under the Indian Penal Code, disaster management act and epidemic diseases act.
Roughly 9.1 million people took the holy dip in the Ganga, coinciding with a devastating surge in coronavirus infections. The mela was cut short after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an appeal to seers on April 17 but by then, officials in many north Indian states had found infections in people who had travelled to Haridwar.
The DM said the probe process involves dialling each number to ask a set of questions to the person at the other end of the line. If a respondent confirms that they were at the mela and got tested, they are asked follow-up questions to confirm that the testing was genuine.
But many respond to the officials saying they had nothing to do with the mela or Covid-19 testing, but received text messages about supposed tests. “These are suspicious cases, which could either be examples of fake tests or errors in noting down numbers,” said Ravishankar.
In many cases, the same number is mentioned against several tests. “There are quite a few such instances. In many instances, one phone number was mentioned against four-five tests. That could also be because they all belonged to one family or group,” said Ravishankar.
But one such case was that of Indore-based contractor Kamal Patel, whose number was mentioned against 56 tests. “I have received over a dozen calls from health officials already,” said Patel. What has complicated the probe is that a lot of phone numbers are either not in service, out of reach, or simply switched off.
“Then there are people who don’t want to talk to us, or simply do not understand our language or what we are conveying,” said Ravishankar.
When the probe began a week ago, the district administration set a deadline of 15 days. “But the process of calling up every number, many of them multiple times, means that it will take much longer,” said Ravishankar.
Apart from making these calls, the district administration is also issuing notices to the labs and government officials to join the probe. A parallel probe by the Haridwar Police’s special investigation team is questioning lab officials and mela administration.