Monday | Jun 02 2025 | 04:16:10 AM
New Delhi, December 15
The Bengaluru Police arrested four people who allegedly helped a South-African national obtain a fake Covid-19 negative certificate to facilitate his departure.
The police said the SA native is a 66-year-old had tested positive on arrival on November 20. The SA national works at pharmaceutical firm in his country.
He was supposed to be quarantined at the Shangri La Hotel for 14 days, but left for South Africa on November 27 after showing a Covid-negative report.
The officials added that his samples were later found to be infected with the Omicron variant on December 2.
The police have arrested two employees of a Bengaluru-based laboratory, which issued the negative test report, and two employees of the man’s company for facilitating the dubious RT-PCR report.
According to reports, the South African national wanted to return to his country and so approached two of his employees about the same. The two employees then approached a private lab near Electronics City and allegedly bribed the lab technicians to prepare a fake negative RT-PCR report by November 26.
The very next day he submitted the fake negative RT-PCR report to the hotel and airport authorities and flew to South Africa. His genome sequencing reports came on December 2 making him one of the first two persons in the country to test positive for the Omicron variant.
