HC restrains Police from penalising Pvt Lab for misreporting COVID-19

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has restrained Haryana Police from penalising a Gurugram private laboratory for allegedly misreporting Covid-19 results.

The Gurugram police had lodged an FIR against SRL Diagnostics on July 9 for the alleged incident reported in April under Disaster Management Act, 2005.

The laboratory found three persons of a family as Covid-19 positive, but a re-test at a government lab showed them negative in 24 hours. SRL Diagnostics had stood by its results.

Their counsel, R S Rai, told the court that if at all, an error has crept in, though not admitted, it would be unreasonable on the part of the authorities to allege mala fide intent. It was argued that the FIR has been registered in haste and without any application of mind.

The alleged misreporting was based upon the result of PGI, Rohtak testing, which had conducted the same at a different point of time and by using different kits, they argued.

The high court bench of Justice Manjari Nehru Kaul, while seeking response from Haryana by August 25, ordered that though probe would continue, challan would not be filed till next date of hearing.

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