Bombay High Court on Thursday continued the hearing against Bollywood actor Sonu Sood and his foundation as well as Mumbai Congress MLA Zeeshan Siddique for procuring critical Covid-19 medicines and other medical equipment during the peak of the second wave of the pandemic whilst bypassing the central authorities. The bench of Justices AA Sayed and GS Kulkarni, at last, received the replies from Sood and Siddique after a show-cause notice was served to them. Reading the reply, the court instantly questioned where the duo received the medicines from.
“There seems to be a problem. The Sood Foundation says we requested, Jubilant, Cipla, Hereto, to help us to provide, indicating that these companies provided. But your (Central Government’s) information says these companies never provided and it was supplied only to the Government Agencies,” the bench posed the question.
To which Advocate general Ashutosh Kumbhakoni replied, “Both say they neither purchased nor stocked it but played a role of facilitator.”
Although the court did not take the name of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, it was pretty evident that it was giving a rap on the knuckle to the Uddhav Thackeray administration when it called state governments to take desired actions on actors and politicians. Both Sonu Sood and Zeeshan mainly operated from Mumbai throughout their evangelical endeavours.
“They (celebrities & politicians) are not before us. We can’t make observations and pass orders. But it is for the State Government to caution them and take an undertaking that they will not indulge in this. They have ample powers available; let them take action,” said the bench, according to a Live Law report.
As reported by TFI — in an early hearing of the case, the Bombay High Court had called out the likes of Sonu Sood for extracting mileage from the entire PR activity of distributing the vaccines when the common man was not able to get his hands on any of the medicines.
“We are concerned about the lives of our citizens. There cannot be any mileage, popularity or any other kind of mileage from this. We are deeply pained if needy patients are being deprived of it. This is a sorry state of affairs,” the bench had remarked.
The court at the time had also tried to understand how the third parties were receiving the medicines when only the Centre had the authority to allocate the medicines, while the state was supposed to collect them. “Who will guarantee that drugs being given by these personalities are of proper quality,” asked the court and further added that for these medicines, “Allocation is by Union, the collection is by state, where is the window of collection by these personalities? That is our anxiety.”
A show-cause notice was issued to Sonu and Zeeshan to explain how they procured Covid-19 relief materials but both had failed to deliver one, and the court had to pull both, as well as the MVA government for its lackadaisical attitude.
“We aren’t impressed. By now you should have had recorded their (celebrities) statements. They don’t have any license,” said the bench.
The recent Navneet Kalra case in Delhi where the politically connected restauranter was caught with over 500 oxygen concentrators has opened the pandora box of such cases. And, celebrities like Sonu Sood procuring medicines for Covid patients also raises another alarm for black marketing and hoarding of necessary medical supplies.
The celebs, who had been accumulating PR points by purportedly serving the common public, have come under the scanner for the procurement of medicines. Sood’s integrity has been put under the test as well in the last few weeks as some of his tweets have been exposed by the netizens where he falsely claimed to have helped the patients.
Nobody is asking the hard and genuine questions of how Sood Foundation hoarding life saving medicines, Oxygen and access to medical facilities and clueless general public is praising his suspicious actions. Medical Boards, Govt and courts must hold him accountable and find out how he’s able to hoard the supplies without a valid license.