Over 2000 scammed in Mumbai’s fake vaccination camps, 8 arrested

The Mumbai police have arrested eight people and filed seven FIRs in relation to the 'fake Covid vaccination camps’, to which around 2000 people have fallen victim.

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The Mumbai police have arrested eight people and filed seven FIRs in relation to the 'fake Covid vaccination camps’, to which around 2000 people have fallen victim, reported NDTV.

The arrested include a woman who shared the credentials of a CoWIN account to generate vaccination certificates.

Mumbai police said that the people who’ve fallen victim to this might have been injected with saline, or salt water, but it still remains unclear. The vials, used to administer the ‘vaccines’ were sourced from Gujarat. The Bombay High Court had asked the BMC to find out what the vials contained, and run a health check on all the victims, on Tuesday. The court had added that the state and BMC should urgently come up with a policy to avoid this in the future.

Mumbai police have charged the accused for attempt to commit culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

"Eight accused have been arrested and ₹ 12.40 lakh that was fraudulently obtained has been recovered. Bank accounts of the main accused - Manish Tripathi and Mahendra Singh - have been frozen," Vishwas Nangre Patil, Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), said.

He added that the police have discovered eight more camps that this syndicate organised, with the accused being common. Mumbai police said that Mahendra Singh, the mastermind, and Sanjay Gupta, who set up the fake camps, were arrested last week.

Serum Institute has approached the BMC to help them track the batch numbers of this shipment, that is supposedly Covishield.


The scam came to light last week when a Kandivali housing society filed a complaint. The Hiranandani Heritage Residents Welfare Association also said that some people who claimed to represent a private hospital and volunteered to organise a camp for the society, cheated them.

"There are doubts about whether we were actually given Covishield or if it was just glucose or expired/waste vaccine," Neha Alshi, one of the residents, said.

Film producer Ramesh Taurani raised a similar complaint, when his employees did not receive vaccination certificates after getting jabbed at a camp that he organised.

The government sought a one-week time period, reported the Times of India.

Data from CoWIN says Mumbai has administered nearly 51 lakh Covid vaccine doses so far.

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