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A Dhaka court has granted police three days to grill Sharmin Jahan, the owner of Aparajita International, following her arrest for supplying fake masks to health workers at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital during the coronavirus crisis.
Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Moinul Islam passed the remand order on Saturday after rejecting Sharmin's plea for bail, reports bdnews24.com.
The law enforcers arrested Sharmin at Shahbagh in Dhaka around 10:30 pm on Wednesday. Afterwards, she was taken to the Detective Branch’s headquarters.
Detective police have taken charge of the investigation, Shahbagh Police Station OC Abul Hasan said on Saturday.
The BSMMU issued a work order to Aparajita on Jun 27 to supply 11,000 masks, according to the case filed by BSMMU Proctor Syed Mozaffor Ahmed on Thursday.
The company supplied 1,300 masks in the first lot on Jun 30, 460 in the second and 1,000 in the third on Jul 2 and 700 in the fourth lot on Jul 13 to the hospital.
The masks supplied in the first and second lots were flawless, but those in the third and fourth batches were found to be faulty.
The quality of the masks fell short of the specifications, according to the case document. Users found some masks with torn straps, while misspelt English words were printed on some of them.
Due to these flaws, the authorities realised that those masks were of low quality and the frontline fighters in the COVID-19 epidemic may risk their lives by using those.
BSMMU asked Sharmin on Jul 18 for an explanation. In her response, Sharmin “apologised” in a written statement on Jul 20, which is equivalent to a “confessional statement”, Proctor Mozaffor said in the case.