Mumbai Police's EOW Summons MMRDA Officials In Jumbo Covid-19 Centre Scam

The Mumbai police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW), probing the irregularities in jumbo Covid centres, has summoned Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) officials for questioning.

The EOW’s special investigation team (SIT), which scrutinised the BMC contracts to vendors, suppliers and manpower management services for jumbo centres, has detected several irregularities in payments at inflated costs to select favoured contractors. It has now asked MMRDA to provide details of the contracts awarded for makeshift Covid hospitals at BKC and Malad.

The Free Press Journal had on July 4 exclusively reported the alleged irregularities in the rentals paid to wedding tent suppliers and tarpaulin makers for two temporary Covid hospitals at BKC and a makeshift jumbo centre at Malad.

While MMRDA had given a contract to Mumbai-based Jess Ideas Pvt Ltd for the construction of a 1,000-bed temporary hospital at BKC ground at highly inflated monthly rentals of Rs2.18 crore for two years, another Delhi-based tent supplier and wedding contractor NK Kapur and Sons was awarded contract for an additional 2,000-bed Covid hospital with 300-bed ICU facility for Rs2.5 crore rental by MMRDA during the pandemic’s second wave in 2021.

In fact, the makeshift hospitals erected by Jess India suffered major water leakages and flooding during monsoons, forcing doctors to shift several hundred patients to Worli NSC and Goregaon Nesco Centres in heavy downpour.

The then MMRDA commissioner RA Rajeev had objected to the makeshift centre in Malad in late 2021 but a senior MVA minister prevailed on the administration to award the contract to wedding contractor NK Kapur and Sons. “Only 74 patients were treated at the Malad centre in two years,” confirmed an EOW investigation official. The BMC paid a huge amount every month to NK Kapur and Sons for two years in anticipation of the third wave which never came. “It was a colossal waste of public money,” alleged a former MMRDA official in his statement.

The highly inflated rentals contracts for temporary makeshift Covid centres are being probed for alleged kickbacks to officials and associates linked to political leaders. Jess India and NK Kapur directors did not respond to calls and mails for comments despite repeated attempts.