Are you planning to hoard medicines and other essentials for the treatment of COVID-19? Then immediately drop this idea as lawyers in Kanpur have decided to reject cases of such black marketers.
Speaking to our correspondent, Mr Rajesh Chaturvedi, Executive Member of The Lawyers Association Kanpur, said, “People selling essential medicines and equipment at higher prices are a threat to humanity and if such people are caught, we won’t take up their cases and will leave them to rot in jail.”
The lethal second wave of COVID-19 infections has hit India hard and daily infections have reached record numbers. Over 4 lakh cases are being reported across the country from the past few days and frontline healthcare workers report a shortage of medical aid in the country.
People are struggling to find hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and life-saving drugs such as Remdesivir. The situation is dire, to say the least, and it has also given a chance to hoarders to make huge profits.
Reports suggest that medicines are being sold at a much higher price than the MRP. Hoarding and black marketing have wreaked havoc on the already COVID-19 battling patients. Such practices prompted the U.P. Government to take action against these black marketers or Samajdrohis.
The state chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, has warned such people and said that NSA and Gangster Act would be invoked against anyone who is found to be guilty of such malpractices.
Some arrests were also made in Kanpur and Lucknow, where even doctors were indulged in such inhumane practices. To deter the spirits of such criminals, a group of lawyers in Kanpur are firm in their decision and their move is being appreciated by residents of the industrial city of Uttar Pradesh.
“We welcome this decision and are grateful to our lawyers who have come forward to stop this malpractice,” said Imran Siddiqui, who is a cashew merchant in the Nayaganj area of the city.
A young lawyer Gaurav Dwivedi (29), demanded that the police charge black marketeers under section 304 of IPC as holding of necessary COVID-19 medicines leads to many deaths. Senior advocate Rajesh Chaturvedi leads the group of lawyers. It includes Adv Ritin Sonkar, Adv Rajesh Kumar Sahu, Adv Gaurav Dwivedi, Adv Ratan Agarwal, Adv Chandra Kumar Chaturvedi and Adv Meenakshi Dixit.