Police raid Uttara with Shahed in tow; pistol, drugs seized

Police have seized a firearm and drugs during a raid in Uttara, taking along Mohammad Shahed, a businessman arrested over a coronavirus test scam and fraudulence.

Shahed is accused in two new cases of firearms and narcotics, in addition to charges of embezzling funds from patients through fraudulent practices.

The detective police raided the Uttara Janapad intersection with Shahed in tow on Saturday night, said Tapan Kumar Saha, chief of Uttara West Police Station.

Police recovered a pistol, bullets, 10 bottles of Phensedyl and five bottles of foreign liquor.

Shahed, the chairman of Regent Group, was being hounded by law-enforcement agencies after it emerged that his hospitals swindled thousands of unsuspecting patients out of millions of takas on the pretext of coronavirus treatment.

The Rapid Action Battalion sealed off the headquarters and two branches of Regent Hospital in Dhaka. It also initiated a case against 17 people, including Shahed, on charges of issuing fake COVID-19 test reports and other irregularities.

Shahed has allegedly embezzled billions by defrauding ordinary people through his microcredit and MLM business.

RAB arrested him on Jul 15 in the frontier district of Satkhira a week after his scandal came to light.

ACCREDITATION CARD SCRAPPED

The government has also scrapped the accreditation card of Shahed, who received the card from the Press Information Department as the editor and publisher of Daily Notun Kagoj.

“Our policy says that anyone arrested by the law enforcement agencies will have their accreditation cards cancelled,” Chief Information Officer Surath Kumar Sarkar told bdnews24.com.

“His card has been annulled as he has been arrested over a fraud case.”

Media personnel need to show a separate ID to enter the secretariat while those having their offices inside the secretariat can use their regular ID.

The PID issues ‘permanent’ and ‘temporary’ ID cards to the media personnel. Permanent cards are valid for three years and temporary cards for a year.

A temporary card was issued for Shahed which had validity until Dec 2, Sarkar said.