The Special Investigation Team of the Calcutta Police’s detective department has seized stamps, forged documents of various departments of the state government and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation during a raid carried out at the residence of Debanjan Deb, who was masquerading as a civil servant while organising fake Covid vaccination camps.

The search operation was carried out late on Sunday night at the Madurdah residence of the Deb’s where the accused’s father Manoranjan, a retired excise department official, is in quarantine after testing Covid positive. It is not known whether Deb’s family members too were given the fake vaccine doses in camps that he held where over 1,500 unsuspecting citizens were duped.

During the raid, the police also recovered three debit cards and bank passbooks, which are being verified.

Reacting to the fake IAS officer case, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that although the state government was in no way involved, police and Calcutta Municipal Corporation(CMC) cannot deny their responsibility.

“Those who play with people’s lives are worse than terrorists. I am surprised at his audacity. Such frauds go around clicking selfies with important people and use them elsewhere. Police and CMC cannot say they were unaware what was going on. The BJP could have provided support too,” Mamata said.

Investigations have also revealed that Deb had a brush with the law in the past and a deeper probe could have helped prevent the fake camps.

In March last year, the Electronics Complex police station had interrogated him after an oral complaint of cheating during a job recruitment. The police let him go for want of enough evidence against him.

But his encounter with the police did not dampen Deb’s spirit who appears to have stepped up his nefarious activities. The Coronavirus outbreak provided Deb the opportunity to delve into social work, distributing masks, sanitisers while interacting with top leaders of the ruling party and getting close enough with some of them to be clicked alongside.

A student of Taki House in Sealdah, Deb completed his graduation from Charuchandra College in zoology. Though he had enrolled for a post-graduate degree in genetics from Calcutta University, he never completed it. He had appeared for the civil services exam in 2014 but could not clear it.

To his parents and many others, he was a government officer who would move around in a blue beacon carrying car, with security. "When he was interrogated by the Electronics Complex police station, his parents came to know he had lied about being an IAS officer,” said a police officer. “For more than a year they knew their son was faking as a high-ranking official with the Calcutta Municipal Corporation," he said.

Posing as a joint commissioner in the civic body, Deb had even carried out raids in several establishments. Some of these exploits had even made it to the pages of some Bengali dailies, along with his photographs.

"In spite of the photographs and news of raids he was carrying out in the name of the CMC, nobody lodged any complaint against him. Either CMC officials were completely unaware, or someone had turned a blind eye,” said a police officer.

During his interrogation, Deb claimed that last year in September-October, he had taken on rent an office space from one Ashok Roy for which he paid a rent of Rs 65,000. The police are verifying his claim.