Madhya Pradesh High Court Upholds Detention Order Against Person Illegally Hoarding, Black Marketing 400 Remdesivir Injections

Observing that the State administration was struggling to ensure supply of medicines and medical facilities to the citizens, the Madhya Pradesh High Court had last week upheld the detention order passed under National Security Act against a person found illegally hoarding and black marketing 400 Remdesivir Injections.

A division bench comprising of Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Shailendra Shukla observed thus:

"Indisputably, in both the waves of Corona, Indore was the worst affected town in the province. There was scarcity of beds, hospitals, oxygen and medicines. The administration was struggling to ensure proper supply of medicines and for providing other medical facilities to the citizen."

A case was registered against Dr. Vinay Shankar Tripathi for offences under sec. 420, 274, 275, 276, 188 of IPC; sec. 18A, 18a(i), 18(a)(iv); sec. 27 of Drug and Cosmetic Act, 1940 r/w Section 3 of Epidemic Diseases Act 1987.

It was thus his case that since the offences were punishable under the provisions of aforesaid enactments, the detention under the NSA Act was wholly impermissible.

Furthermore, it was also argued that the District Magistrate had failed to mentioned the period of detention while issuing the detention order.

According to the petitioner, it was submitted that he was engaged in pharmaceutical business for which he had intended to get the remdesivir injections patented in his name and an application was prefered before Controller General of Patent, Designs and Trade Marks for the said purpose.

Observing that the detention order cannot be interfered with for not mentioning the period of detention, the Court said:

"By no stretch of imagination, it can be said that singular and operative reason for detaining the Corpus is the apprehension of District Magistrate regarding grant of bail in future to the Corpus. On the contrary the grounds of detention shows that District Magistrate has taken care of grave situation because of Covid-19 pandemic."

Furthermore, the Court observed:

"Since 400 injections were found in possession of Corpus, who intended to black- market it, it has caused serious dent to the 'public order'. Since action of Corpus was prejudicial to the maintenance of 'public order' and maintenance of 'supplies essential to the public', the District Magistrate decided to pass the detention order."

The Court therefore concluded that necessary ingredients for invoking NSA Act were available in the instant case and that no flaw in decision making process could be established in the matter in hand.

The Court therefore dismissed the petition with the said observation.

The Bench also considered other bunch of pleas filed by detenus who had challenge their detention orders passed under the NSA after they were found hoarding essential covid life saving drugs in the second Covid wave this year. 

Observing that other petitions raised similar questions of consideration, the Court also went ahead to dismiss other pleas and upheld the respective detention orders.

In a similar development, the same bench has held that it is a constitutional right of a detenu, who has been detained under the National Security Act, to make representation to the detaining authority against the detention order, violation of it which vitiate and make the order as illegal.

It also held that the expression "public order" under sec. 3 of the Act is wide enough to include the event of black marketing of an essential drug namely Remdesivir. 

"In view of these authoritative pronouncements, there is no manner of doubt that the detenu had a valuable right to make a representation to the detaining authority and denial of this opportunity vitiates the impugned order." The bench said.

Title: Smt. Monica Tripathi v. State of MP and other connected matters

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