Tackle the wave of crime amid the pandemic

Former DGP, Tripura

An ambulance driver demanded Rs 50,000 for carrying a Covid patient from Noida to Medanta Hospital in Gurugram which should normally cost about Rs 2,000-3,000. A relative of a patient bought a Remdesivir injection in Delhi for Rs 70,000 as against its normal cost of about Rs 4,000 or even less. In many cases, spurious injections and drugs are being sold at exorbitant prices.

A hospital bed in Bengaluru was being sold for Rs 1.20 lakh, an amount in which you can buy an excellent hospital bed from the market. An oxygen concentrator costing less than

Rs 50,000 is being sold for about

Rs 1.50 lakh. Oxygen cylinders are being sold at many times their price and in some cylinders sold, there is no oxygen. The same is the case with the cost of refilling oxygen cylinders. In some cases, fire extinguishers were sold as oxygen cylinders.

Only a few such cases have come to notice. There are thousands which have escaped notice.

Every essential thing connected to Covid has become prone to black marketeering. Middlemen, hoarders and profiteers are making hay amid the pandemic.

Add to this the ghastly crime of selling of old dirty gloves by just washing them with water or the making of RT-PCR kits with dirty hands, looting cash and jewellery from dead bodies in hospitals or the fleecing of people at cremation grounds. Topping it all is the taking off kafans, sheets and shawls from the dead bodies and selling them as new after washing.

Then there are some social media criminals offering all kinds of help, including plasma donation, but committing cybercrime by demanding money digitally at the last moment and then siphoning off the money from the bank accounts of victims after getting the credit card details.

The list of crimes can go on. There are also offenders among the pillars of our democracy.

In the legislature, many politicians are flouting Covid safety protocols by holding or attending big wedding receptions and rallies where masks and social distancing go for a toss.

In the executive, quite a few in the Central Government did not plan, execute and monitor proper action in various dimensions either before or during the severe second wave, leading to agony and deaths. The failure is regarding the ramping up or upkeep of medical infrastructure, the supply of oxygen, vaccine policies and a lot more.

The state governments have also failed as they went about dismantling temporary medical infrastructure rather than scaling them up during the lean period of February/March this year. Many states allowed big religious gatherings like the Kumbh Mela or funeral processions like the one noticed at Badaun in Uttar Pradesh recently, big rallies during the Assembly elections, holding of panchayat elections, allowing the crowding of public places and markets without strictly enforcing Covid-appropriate behaviour — all of which led to a huge surge in Covid cases spreading fast even to rural areas.

Many hospitals in the states are in a bad shape on various counts and there is no accountability. Enough testing and tracing are not being done because there are an inadequate number of labs. Some ventilators sent by the Central Government to states like Rajasthan and Punjab for government hospitals have been given on rent to private hospitals and many are still lying in stores.

The worst is the concealing of the correct information about the number of cases and deaths by the states. But cremation grounds don’t lie and deaths are much more than those mentioned by the state governments.

Some of these are criminal activities and those responsible must be identified, sacked and dealt with under the law. There has to be some accountability. The Allahabad High Court has gone on to call the deaths due to the unavailability of medical help as ‘genocide’. The Election Commission is also responsible for not enforcing Covid-appropriate behaviour during the elections, leading to a surge in cases. The Madras High Court had recently asked why EC should not be charged with murder for not banning election rallies during the pandemic.

Strong action needs to be taken against all criminals from all fields as per the law. Enforcing the National Security Act (NSA) against them can also be considered. Where there is no law or inadequate law, it should be initiated and strengthened with ordinances at once.

Such crimes should be made non-bailable offences. Fast investigation and fast-track courts should be formed and exemplary punishment given. The properties of the guilty should be confiscated as per the provisions built into these laws. Rewards to whistleblowers should be included in the new laws. Some of these provisions exist in the recently amended Drugs & Cosmetics (Amendment) Act, 2008, but it is only for drugs.

Further, such criminals should be socially boycotted by extensively naming and shaming them. And, as a society, we should learn from countries like Japan that are at their best behaviour during tragedies.