New Delhi, Aug 29 : The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the Centre and issued an application for an invoke of the National Security Act (NSA) against those who engage in hoarding profits adulteration, black marketing.A bench of Justices Abdul Nazeer and V.Ramasubramanian issued notice regarding the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.
In the petition, Upadhyay highlighted the facts during the second wave of Covid-19 in April last year in which he found in the leading newspapers that a lot of people of Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Below Poverty Line (BPL) died outside of hospitals despite beds being readily available.
“Thousands of EWS and BPL citizens died on the streets, in vehicles, in hospitals, and in their homes due the hoarding of hospital beds and adulterated Covid medications and black-market advertising of medical equipment like an oxygen cylinders and huge profits in the selling of life-saving injections such as Remdesivir and Tocilizumab etc.In Delhi itself, Remdesivir injection was sold at a cost of Rs 70,000 , despite the price was 899 rupees.In the same way, a large quantity of oxygen concentrators as well as oxygen cylinders were found from different locations,” his plea read.
He also noted that the Essential Commodities Act was enacted to regulate the import of goods and the distribution of drugs.”But it’s not enough to stop hoarding, adulteration for profit and black marketing, which has stripped hundreds of thousands of people of their rights fundamentally guaranteed by Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution,” the plea read.
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