Sleuths of the Bhayandar police have registered an offence against five people for possessing and circulating bogus tokens at a Covid-19 vaccination center in Bhayandar (west) on Tuesday. The Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) had scheduled offline vaccination sessions at its 33 centers to facilitate first doses of Covidshleid vaccines to nearly 5000 people from 11 am to 5 pm.
Tokens were distributed on a first-come, first vaccinated basis. However, at one of the centers located in Our Lady of Nazareth School in Bhayandar, medical officer-Rajshri Parab noticed some of the tokens were sans secret codes which are tagged by the MBMC hours before sessions.
Realizing that some of the tokens were fake, the officer alerted the on-duty guards and reported the matter to the police. Based on the complaint, the police filed an offence under sections 417, 420, 465,468 and 471 of the IPC. While three of them were found to be in possession of the fake tokens, the mastermind who printed and circulated them is yet to be identified.
Amidst a shortage of vaccines, the mandate of being fully vaccinated to travel in local trains has led to a huge surge in the number of people approaching the centers for the past couple of days.
