New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Wednesday carried out searches in connection with its probe into alleged bogus transactions by private hospitals in Himachal Pradesh including at least two linked to state Congress leaders, ThePrint has learnt.
Sources in the agency allege that the Fortis and Shree Balaji hospitals in Kangra, linked to Congress MLA Raghubir Singh Bali and Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee treasurer Dr Rajesh Sharma respectively, were among private hospitals in the state that generated fake Ayushman cards and availed benefits in the name of reimbursement to beneficiaries.
Raids are underway at the residences of Bali and Dr Sharma — among 19 locations across Delhi, Chandigarh, Punjab and five districts of Himachal Pradesh, namely Kangra, Una, Shimla, Mandi and Kullu, it is learnt.
Earlier last month, when the Congress fielded Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur to contest the assembly bypoll from Dehra seat, Sharma had accused Sukhu of ‘mental harassment’.
Sharma unsuccessfully contested from the Dehra constituency in the 2022 assembly elections.
Bali, Congress MLA from Nagrota, is chairman of Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and vice-chairman of Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Board. The Fortis Hospital in Kangra is a unit of Himachal Healthcare Pvt Ltd, of which he is a director.
Launched in 2018 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ayushman Bharat scheme offers a cover of Rs 5 lakh per family per year to nearly 12 crore economically disadvantaged families for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation across empanelled public and private sector hospitals in India.
The money laundering probe stems from a case filed by Himachal Pradesh’s State Vigilance & Anti-Corruption Bureau (SV & ACB), Una, against one Kiran Soni, a former Arogya Mitra at the Shri Banke Bihari Hospital in Una for allegedly generating fake Ayushman cards.
The FIR was filed under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on 23 January last year.
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Rs 25 crore ‘proceeds of crime’
The FIR, a copy of which ThePrint has seen, alleged that Soni generated as many as 69 fake Ayushman cards between November 2019 to November 2021 and additionally took Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500 each from a number of genuine beneficiaries of the scheme.
Based on this FIR, the Shimla zonal office of the federal probe agency registered an ECIR (ED’s equivalent of an FIR) earlier this month.
Sources in the ED said the probe goes beyond Shri Bankey Bihari Hospital and that others including Fortis Hospital, Shri Balaji Hospital, Sood Nursing Home and Sri Harihar Hospital also availed of illegal benefits by generating a total of 373 fake Ayushman cards.
The ED’s probe so far suggests that Rs 40.68 lakh were syphoned off by these hospitals in the guise of expenditure on treatments given to purported beneficiaries of the Ayushman Bharat scheme. Sources in the agency added that 8,937 Ayushman Bharat golden cards issued in Himachal Pradesh have been scrapped so far for violations of norms.
The Ayushman card is issued under a national scheme, whereas the golden card is issued under a state-specific healthcare scheme.
Findings so far have led investigators to suspect that the extent of the proceeds of crime could be as high as Rs 25 crore.
“Some of the beneficiaries who were claimed to be on the list of patients, having received reimbursement, denied possession or any information of any such ID card and neither did they undergo any treatment at such hospitals. Some of these hospitals have also made claims for surgeries and procedures which were never done. Investigation also revealed that these hospitals were de-empanelled from the Ayushman Bharat scheme for illegal practices and non-compliance of guidelines,” a source in the ED told ThePrint.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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