Shahed admitted to issuing fake Covid reports: DB

Regent Hospital's Chairman Mohammad Shahed alias Shahed Karim was directly involved in providing fake Covid-19 certificates. 

Most Covid-19 certificates issued by the hospital were false. Although some medical equipment were kept in the hospital, all those were kept only for deceiving patients. The two branches of the hospital have never used the equipment for Covid-19 testing.

Shahed said this to police officials during primary interrogation, according to Abdul Baten, additional commissioner of the Detective Branch, Dhaka Metropolitan Police. He was briefing the media at the DB office on Mintoo Road in the city on Thursday. 

Responding to a question, Abdul Baten said the DB will conduct drives to recover the equipment kept in Regent Hospital if required. 

He also said if any victim wants to lodge a complaint against Shahid, the DB will provide necessary cooperation to them as well. 

Meanwhile, a Dhaka court has placed Regent Group Chairman Shahed Karim and Managing Director Masud Parvez on 10-day remand each and another employee of the group Tarekul Islam on a 7-day remand over allegations of faking Covid-19 test reports and embezzlement. 

Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Jasim granted the remand after the police produced them before the court on Thursday morning. 

Fraudster Shahed told the court, "Sir, Regent Hospital came forward for Covid-19 treatment when no hospital was ready to treat such patients. The agreement has been made with the government. I was coronavirus positive; our managing director was also infected as well. My father died from Covid-19."

According to sources, Shahed made a contract with one Bachchu who is known as a mafia in Satkhira border area for going to India. He paid a huge sum of money to Bachchu for this and all the money was paid through Hundi.  

However, a team of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Wednesday arrested Shahed Karim from Satkhira before he could flee the country. 

Earlier on June 6, the RAB raided the Uttara and Mirpur branches of Regent Hospital over allegations of faking Covid-19 test reports. The RAB filed a case against 17 people including Shahed with Uttara West police station on the following day. 

On Thursday, the RAB filed another case against Shahed over allegations of keeping fake currencies. A day before, one more case was filed against him on charge of keeping illegal weapon.

In the meantime, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on Thursday sent letters to some banks seeking information about accounts of Shahed. The banks are Bank Asia, Dutch-Bangla Bank, Padma Bank, and NRB Bank. 

Abu Bakar Siddique, ACC deputy director and team leader of the inquiry team formed to probe Shahed's corruption sent those letters.