Kolkata fake vaccination camps: Police raids main accused Debanjan's residence

Kolkata: A team of Kolkata police on Monday conducted a raid at the residence of accused Debanjan, who allegedly organised fake COVID-19 vaccination camps impersonating an IAS officer in the city.

"A team conducted a raid at the residence of accused Debanjan, who organised fake vaccine camps and recovered some stamps, forged documents of various departments. Three debit cards and bank passbooks were also recovered," informed Kolkata Police.

Earlier, according to the police, Debanjan had confessed to having organised two such camps in the city--at City College and Kasba.

The police said: "He claims that he wrote a mail to Serum Institute of India for sending Covishield. This is being verified. He has also confessed to organising two camps. One at City College and one in his office at Kasba. No other camp for vaccination was organised elsewhere."

"Ten such persons have been summoned for examination or are being examined. Apart from this, we are examining more people called for cross-examination. He used to write letters to various government agencies, would put receipt stamps on those letters to convince the victims. He himself would write a response to such a letter," the police said.

Earlier on Friday, an SIT was formed by the police to investigate the matter two days after TMC MP Mimi Chakraborty was duped in the fake vaccination drive. Deb was subsequently arrested based on Chakraborty's complaint.

Recently, the West Bengal government released new directives that will be followed by the non-government entities for setting up COVID vaccination camps in West Bengal after the fake vaccination camp in Kolkata came to light.

“All the private commercial health facilities, working administrations planning to set up COVID vaccination camp (CVC) must seek prior permission from the Health Department. The CVC must appoint a nodal officer who will be the point of contact of the CVC and health department”, read the directive.