The 500 square yard premises of Bioaide Corporation, the firm which supplied Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits worth over Rs 1 crore in the alleged purchase scam to Himachal Pradesh, is off limits. As The Indian Express visited the unit in lane number 2 of Saidpura’s Luxmi Industrial Park in Dera Bassi (Mohali district) on Friday, it found the gate locked from inside. But a unit adjacent to it, run by the same owner, was up and running. A guard from this neighbouring unit - the Sterile Concepts Healthcare, guided the correspondent to a room where the owner, Gurjeet Singh Kohli, appeared in a while, but declined to talk about the matter claiming that it was under “investigation and sub-judice”. Next to this room, a worker was busy stitching masks to keep Covid infections at bay. According a Punjab government’s list, neither Bioaide nor Sterile is among the 93 manufacturers cleared by the South India Textile Research Association for PPEs production. While Kohli refused to talk, inquiries revealed he was into manufacturing products related to medical field for long and had also remained general secretary of Dera Bassi Small Scale Industry Welfare Association. The Association has been rechristened as Laghu Udyog Bharati Dera Bassi. Its current president, Anil Sharma told The Indian Express: "Kohli set up this firm here around six years ago. The firm was also coming up with good medical products like patient warming blankets and patient transfer system." Vouching for Kohli’s honesty, Sharma added that Kohli had started producing PPE kits at a very early stage of the pandemic breakout and had manufactured 3,000 PPE kits in a day until some time ago, which included "gown, headgear, mask, face shield, gloves and feet cover". He said that Kohli's firm was well equipped to manufacture PPEs at such a scale. "Moreover, largely it is assembling of various elements as lamination for PPEs is outsourced from some other unit," he added. Sharma claimed Kohli's firm was manufacturing PPEs with 70 gram per square metre thickness as per "the international standards". He added "Later, the government increased the thickness to 95 gram per square metre." Kohli, as per Sharma, set up the firm in a regime of "Free Entrepreneur Zone (FEZ) when relaxations included no charges for change of land use". Meanwhile, officials in the Industry department of Punjab said they will have to check out for details relating to registration of Kohli's firm. Mohali District Industry Centre (DIC) General Manager Harjinder Singh Pannu said, "We will have to check the details about registration. It is not mandatory, but optional to register with our department."
