The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has today announced that it will vaccinate all those people who were humbugged by the masquerader Debanjan Deb in taking “fake Covid vaccines” as the civic body carries out health examination of the victims.

The civic body is also lodging an FIR against a private bank, ICICI, where the accused had an account in KMC’s name and received funds from a microfinance company.

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Addressing a Press conference, Atin Ghosh, KMC board member in charge of health, today said, “The KMC is taking all responsibility in vaccinating those people who were duped by the fraud, Debanjan Deb into taking shots of a fake vaccine. We are also conducting thorough health examination of these people, most of who are panicked and have symptoms of mild body aches.”

Ghosh pointed out, “However, at present, we are consulting with state health department officials whether it is safe to administer them with Covid vaccines since they have already been injected with an antibiotic.”

Commenting on what possibly was injected if it wasn’t a Covid vaccine, Ghosh said, “The forensic tests are being done. However, as per KMC’s preliminary probe conducted by our health experts, those ampules did not have any Covid vaccine tags but possibly an antibiotic used in the treatment of chest infection. We can only identify what exactly it was when the forensic reports come out.”

Deb’s sham is now unfolding which includes opening a bank account in KMC’s name to receive an amount of around Rs 1.1 lakh from a microfinance company. Ghosh said, “No one is authorised to open a KMC account except for the chief municipal finance and accounts officer. However, the private bank surprisingly chose to open the account for the accused who had posed as the joint municipal commissioner of KMC. We are lodging an FIR against the bank. We only came to know of the matter when this microfinance company came up with their complaint.”

Meanwhile, photographs of Deb with Trinamul heavyweights and KMC top bosses such as Firhad Hakim, Atin Ghosh, Debashish Kumar, Sudip Banerjee, Subrata Mukherjee, and others have sparked a political storm. This was further fuelled by a plaque below a statue of Rabindranath Tagore, installed in February at Taltala, which bore the names of Hakim, Ghosh, Sudip Banerjee along with the name of the conman.

The Chowringhee MLA Naina Bandopadhyay has lodged a complaint at Taltala Police Station, expressing surprise as to how her name along with her husband, Sudip’s, appeared when they were not even present at the inauguration.

Ghosh, however, clarified today that neither KMC gave permission for the statue nor the civic body’s members, whose names appear on the plaque, were present at the inauguration. He said the statue was erected by a local library and not KMC. Moreover, the local councillor Indrani Saha was not invited and none from KMC visited the programme. “We have ordered the removal of that plaque”.