With the initiatives of the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission (WBCERC) Howrah district health administration sealed the private diagnostic laboratory in Uluberia today.

Justice Asim Banerjee, WBCERC chairman, today held a virtual hearing with the laboratory owner and Dr Netai Chandra Mondal, chief medical officer of health (CMOH) of Howrah and directed the latter to take strong legal action against the lab.

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While speaking to reporters this afternoon Justice Banerjee said, “Today, we have taken strong measures on a very serious issue. According to a news report published in The Statesman on 4 May, the private lab, New India Diagnostic & Polyclinic Centre, used to give pathological test reports signed by a doctor, who is dead. We filed a suo motu complaint against the laboratory. We contacted the CMOH of Howrah and with our initiatives he issued a show-cause notice to the owner of the laboratory yesterday. The CMOH has started the process of cancelling its license. The owner has also admitted his mistake during the virtual hearing today,” Justice Banerjee, a retired judge of the high court, said.

The Statesman had carried a report on how the private laboratory at the Hospital Gate in Uluberia used to issue pathological test reports to patients signed by a ‘dead doctor’ raising serious questions on the authenticity and validity of the tests conducted at the lab.

Various test reports were found carrying signatures of the ‘dead doctor’ in biochemistry Dr Ajoy Kumar Das (MBBS, MD in biochemistry) as pathologist/pathology-in-charge in the laboratory. But Dr Das, retired physician of a Delhi-based hospital, died of cancer during June in 2020.