The Bombay high court (HC) on Wednesday, June 16, directed the Maharashtra government to conduct a thorough inquiry against MLA Zeeshan Siddiqui and actor Sonu Sood into the supply of COVID-19 essential drugs to citizens.
A division bench of justice SP Deshmukh and justice Girish Kulkarni also observed that these people (celebrities) projected themselves as some kind of messiahs without verifying if the drugs were spurious or if the supply was legal.
The high court bench issued the directives after the state Advocate General Ashutosh Kumbhakoni told HC that it had registered a criminal case at BDR Charitable Trust at Mazagaon and the pharmacy in Lifeline Hospital and its trustee for supplying anti-COVID drug Remdesivir to Siddique even though the trust didn’t have a licence.
He further submitted that a criminal case had been registered against the trust while a further probe into the pharmacy revealed that the injections were procured from the Cipla godown at Bhiwandi.
However, the bench asked if the case was registered against Siddiqui as well. Kumbhakoni said, as of now, the case is not registered against the MLA as he merely diverted those who approached him to the trust.
But all this happened at the behest of one person, to direct someone is not an offence? In both these cases, we would expect the government to seriously examine the role of the two, the bench added.
Remdesivir, among other medicines, is directly procured by the central government and then allocated to various states depending on the coronavirus caseload. Thus, private persons procuring and distributing it should not have happened according to government rules.
The high court will next hear the plea on June 25.
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