- CAIT National President B. C. Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that the initial investigations have revealed that the terrorists used Amazon to procure chemicals for making IEDs, batteries and other accessories.
- Ammonium Nitrate, one of the chemicals used, was banned in 2010 under the Explosives Act, 1884 after it was found it was used in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
- If the allegations made by CAIT are actually true, Amazon should be fully banned in India.
Confederation of All Indian Traders (CAIT), the powerful industry body that promotes the interest of more than 8 crore traders of the country, has made a startling revelation – the chemicals used in the Pulwama attack that resulted in the death of 42 soldiers were sourced through Amazon.
CAIT National President B. C. Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that the initial investigations have revealed that the terrorists who carried out the Pulwama attack used Amazon online shopping account to procure chemicals for making IEDs, batteries and other accessories.
The explosives used in Pulwama were determined through the forensic probe to be ammonium nitrate, nitroglycerin, etc. Since facilitation of the sale of contraband item ammonium nitrate was used against Indian soldiers, a case of treason should be registered against Amazon and its officials, they said, as per a report by Outlook India.
Ammonium Nitrate was banned in 2010 under the Explosives Act, 1884 after it was found it was used in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Before the Mumbai blast, ammonium nitrate was used in the blasts at Varanasi and Malegaon in 2006 and the serial blasts in Delhi in 2008.
However, the terrorists in Pulwama were able to procure the item through Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-led company has zero respect and fear for the law of the land. It is violating the Indian FDI law without any consequences, but the Modi government is yet to take any action against the company.
If the allegations made by CAIT are actually true, Amazon should be fully banned in India.
Read More: Things not looking good for Amazon as India’s CAIT joins global campaign to teach a lesson to it
India allows FDI in the marketplace but not retail, so practically Amazon India can only provide a marketplace to the various retailers. But, in the last eight to nine years, the company has consistently abused the law of the land to sell discounted and copied goods from its affiliated companies.
Recently, the public accounts of some of the amazon companies revealed that they had paid over Rs 8,500 crores in terms of legal fees. This amount was paid over a period of two years. The subsidiaries of amazon involved in the process include Amazon Retail India Pvt Ltd, Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd, Amazon Transportation Services Pvt Ltd, Amazon Wholesale (India) Pvt Ltd, and Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd (AWS). It is highly speculated that this amount was used to bribe government officials through independent lawyers. The company is also under probe by the Competition Commission of India for its anti-competition practices.
A few months ago, Union Commerce minister Piyush Goyal criticized the company for trying to establish its monopoly in the country. He said– “Big companies wield a lot of power owing to large amounts of money with them, they are trying their best to maintain their free will in the e-commerce market. To hurt our small business and traders. And after a while, it causes harm to our consumers in the long term,”. He also vowed to bring out new rules to control its monopolistic attitude.
The Ministry of Commerce is already working on an Open Network for Digital Commerce – a UPI-like platform for e-commerce, and once it is ready, the government should kick Amazon out just like American Express and Mastercard were kicked out after UPI’s success.