'Can't go after good samaritans for helping when govts failed'
New Delhi: Coming down heavily on the Delhi government's Drug Controller Authority for initiating a "witch hunt" against and consciously targetting a certain political party by taking legal action against its MLA for distributing medical oxygen to needy citizens during the virus' second wave, the Delhi High Court has asked the body to clear its stand on the issue and observed that good samaritans can't be targetted when both the Centre and state governments failed to provide oxygen to the citizenry.
The court was taking exception to the drug authority's move to initiate prosecution against Aam Aadmi Party MLAs Praveen Kumar and Imran Hussain for stocking and distributing medical oxygen during the second wave through various public camps organised across the city.
Significantly, the drug authority has given a clean chit to BJP president Adesh Gupta and Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri in a private complaint lodged against them for illegally distributing medical oxygen. On July 8, the drug body had lodged a complaint against the Gautam Gambhir Foundation (GGF) and the two AAP MLAs before a Dwarka court.
The division bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh rapped the drug body, represented by Advocate Nandita Rao, and stated that if it were to target good samaritans distributing oxygen, then it should initiate prosecution against Gurudwars, temples and other organisations who were helping the citizens in the hour of need.
"How can you prosecute him (Kumar)? The state, both GNCTD and Union, failed in providing sufficient oxygen to people in Delhi. There were some Samaritans who provided oxygen. You can't prosecute them," the court orally remarked.
The bench, with regard to action against Kumar and Hussain, said that in this way, half of Delhi should be prosecuted.
Further calling it an act of "very consciously targetting particular leaders of a particular party", the bench remarked: "We will certainly not permit this. It is so unfortunate that a human tragedy has been turned into a political battle, you are just trying to make political capital out of it…," the bench added.
Meanwhile, the drug body denied that the move was a witch hunt and that a hypertechnical view was taken with respect to prosecution against the licenses of Kumar and Hussain.
The court remarked that the reason Gambhir was prosecuted was because he "very irresponsibly, bought 10,000 tablets of Fabiflu in one go and then he is stocking that and distributing it to people in his constituency...so much so that at the end of it all he was still left with some 236 odd strips".
Subsequently, the bench directed Rao to seek instructions and take a clear stand with regard to initiation of prosecution against the persons allegedly involved in hoarding of medical oxygen.
