India News | Kolkata Man Duped More Than 1,000 People over COVID-19 Tests, Arrested
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. A person was arrested from the Garia area in south Kolkata for allegedly duping over a thousand people after taking money from them for COVID-19 tests, police said on Tuesday.
Kolkata, Aug 4 (PTI) A person was arrested from the Garia area in south Kolkata for allegedly duping over a thousand people after taking money from them for COVID-19 tests, police said on Tuesday.
The arrest was made late on Monday, following a complaint lodged by a private hospital at the Purba Jadavpur police station, they said.
The man, identified as Saumitra Chaudhuri, was allegedly collecting swab samples and money for COVID-19 tests from people for quite some time by claiming himself to be an employee of the hospital, police said.
We have been receiving complaints that a person has been visiting houses in Purba Jadavpur area and collecting swabs, identifying himself as our employee. He was not delivering them any reports and these people approached us, following which we lodged a police complaint, an official of the hospital said.
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Chaudhuri was arrested from his residence in Garia, police said.
Police are probing whether he has any link with the trio who was arrested last week for similar criminal activities in the area, an officer said.
The accused was a contractual worker with the same private hospital a couple of years back, he added. PTI SCH SOM SOM 08042337 NNNNne call wasn't a requirement and that it usually asks employees not to call athletes because that could undermine the testing program.
“Any advanced notice of testing, in the form of a phone call or otherwise, provides an opportunity for athletes to engage in tampering or evasion or other improper conduct which can limit the efficacy of testing,” the AIU said in an e-mailed statement.
The AIU added that under World Anti-Doping Agency rules “proof that a telephone call was made is not a requisite element of a missed test and the lack of any telephone call does not give the athlete a defense to the assertion of a missed test.”
Some of Coleman's earlier missed tests were not with the AIU but with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, whose own handbook for athletes says phone calls are usually reserved only for the last five minutes of a time slot and “to confirm the unavailability of the athlete, not to locate an athlete for testing.”
Athletes are required to list their whereabouts for an hour each day when they must be available to be tested. A violation means an athlete either did not fill out forms telling authorities where they could be found, or that they weren't where they said they would be when testers arrived.
Coleman said in his post he has been appealing the latest missed test for six months with the AIU, which runs the anti-doping program for World Athletics. He explained there was no record of anyone coming to his home and that if he had been called he was only five minutes away.
It's the second time Coleman has faced a potential ban for a whereabouts violation. Coleman won the 100 meters at the world championships in Doha, Qatar, last September after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency dropped his case for missed tests because of a technicality.
“I have never and will never use performance enhancing supplements or drugs,” Coleman wrote Tuesday. “I am willing to take a drug test EVERY single day for the rest of my career for all I care to prove my innocence.” Coleman is the latest in a string of big-name athletes hit with whereabouts charges in 2020.
The AIU filed a similar charge this month against women's 400-meter world champion Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain. She was already under investigation when she won gold in Doha last year in the fastest time since 1985.
Former U.S. national 200 champion Deajah Stevens was suspended in May. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)