Dr Wahid Mirza, 45, would allegedly demand Rs2-3,000 instead of the regular Rs150 from passengers who wanted to skip the queue to take yellow fever vaccination.
Officials of the anti-corruption bureau on Tuesday arrested a government doctor posted at Mumbai airport for allegedly demanding bribe from passengers flying to African countries.
Dr Wahid Mirza, 45, would allegedly demand Rs2,000 to Rs3,000 instead of the regular Rs150 from passengers who wanted to skip the queue to take yellow fever vaccination. Dr Mirza’s driver Mohammed Javed Ansari, 30, had also been arrested.
“The normal procedure is that people who visit African countries have to take the vaccination 10 days before their commencement of travel. For this, people have to wait in long queues outside the yellow fever vaccination centre at Sahar terminal,” said an ACB official.
Every day 60-70 people are vaccinated at this centre and people start queuing up as early as 3am as the registration for vaccination closes at 10.30am. Those who are registered are called in at 1.30pm for the vaccination and are given a certificate which they have to produce before travelling.
“People who wanted to jump the queue were the ones who were targeted by this doctor. While the doctor would wait in his car some 100m away from the centre, his driver would approach the patients,” the official added.
Dr Mirza would then allegedly administer the vaccination on the backseat of his car and give a blank certificate signed by him so that the patients could fill in their names and date of inoculation. Then in the afternoon he would go to the clinic and administer injections to those waiting in the queue.
“The doctor had demanded Rs3,500 from a passenger going to Ghana, who was from the Society For Awareness of Civil Rights, an NGO. He contacted the ACB, who laid a trap on September 20 and caught the doctor and his driver,” said RPY Rao, president of the NGO.
ACB officials confirmed the arrests. “They have been charged under sections 7 and 8, 120 (B) of the Prevention of Corruption Act,” said an ACB official.
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