Lagatar24 Desk
Patna, Dec.7: A report by the Bihar health department shows that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home minister Amit Shah, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, as well as Bollywood stars Priyanka Chopra and Akshay Kumar, were recently tested for Covid-19 in Bihar’s Arwal district.
According to Times of India, apart from top politicians, the names of other netas and film actors appear in the data for the RT-PCP tests done on October 27 in Karpi block of Arwal district, in a textbook case of faked Covid testing.
Despite the fact that none of these persons live in Bihar or have ever visited the state, their addresses have been listed in several villages in the Arwal district.
PM Modi’s name, for example, appears three times on the list of persons who have been tested. His address was stated in Puran, the village of Ram Jatan Sinha, the previous state Congress president. Priyanka Chopra’s name appeared six times in the data, each time with her residence in Jonha village, Karpi block, Arwal district. Amit Shah and Akshay Kumar were named four times each.
Swab samples from these persons were obtained on October 27 and sent for RT-PCR testing the next day, according to the data. In the test reports, none of them were found to be positive for Covid.
Two data operators have been fired, according to state health society executive director Sanjay Kumar Singh, and a FIR will be filed in this case. Sanjay labelled it a prank and stated an inquiry would be conducted to determine who took the samples, if any were taken.
Senior officials refuted the two data operators’ claims that they were under pressure from above.
This isn’t the first time in the state that forgery has been discovered in Covid-19 tests. The then-Jamui civil surgeon and other officials were suspended in February this year for reporting fraudulent Covid-19 tests. At the time, the column for the people tested’s contact numbers was blank.
Tejashwi Yadav, the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), criticised the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar on Tuesday for falsifying data on the number of Covid-19 deaths and RT-PCR tests conducted by the state’s health department during the pandemic’s second wave earlier this year.
The state Assembly’s Leader of the Opposition further accused the department of corruption for distributing Covid-19 vaccinations on fake names. Nitish Kumar, according to Tejashwi, is to blame for the state’s position as the country’s last in terms of development.
He went on to say that the state health department is notorious for corruption, medical equipment theft, RT-PCR data falsification, and patient mortality caused by Covid-19. According to a recent Niti Aayog assessment, Bihar’s health infrastructure is already at the bottom of the heap. Several courts have also chastised the Nitish Kumar government for widespread Covid mishandling.
