The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has filed a case against seven people, including former Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Professor Abul Kalam Azad, former Registrar of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) Dr Sabrina Sharmin Hussain, and JKG Healthcare’s Managing Director Ariful Chowdhury, on charges of misuse of power, breach of trust, forgery, and fraud.
ACC Assistant Director Afnan Jannat Keya filed the case at the commission's Integrated District Office, Dhaka-1 on Wednesday (10 July), under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947.
According to the ACC case statement, Dr Sabrina financially benefited by using the title of Chairman of JKG Healthcare, a profit-oriented business entity, without permission from the authorities while serving at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases. She, in collusion with the Director General of Health Services and others, facilitated approval for JKG Healthcare, a nominal entity of her husband Ariful Chowdhury’s Oval Group, to collect Covid-19 samples without proper registration or trade license.
Despite obtaining approval from the Health Directorate to collect samples for Covid-19 testing at no cost from booths, her office staff collected samples from homes and charged fees for tests. They failed to send the collected samples to the appropriate labs and instead provided fake and forged reports (approximately 15,460) to the service recipients.
Additionally, with the intention of deception and fraud, Dr Sabrina altered her birth date and used two active national identity cards to provide false information at her workplace, extending her service period by five years to illegally avail government job benefits.
