Plea for distributing customs seized PPE kits to health workers rejected

The Delhi High Court Friday termed as a "wastage of judicial time" a plea seeking direction to the Centre to release the customs confiscated PPE kits, face masks and sanitisers for distributing them to Covid-19 front line warriors including health workers and police personnel.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan declined to entertain the plea, saying "courts cannot do charity at the cost of others", like the owners of the seized goods in the instant matter.

The bench said the owners might come to court seeking release of their goods, so the same cannot be utilised for any other purpose.

The court also remarked that the petitioner, Hemant Manjani, despite being a lawyer was moving such a petition which not only wasted judicial time but was also "useless".

As the bench warned of imposing costs in the matter, the petitioner withdrew his plea and it was disposed of as withdrawn.

The plea had cited several news articles that 1,000 PPE kits were seized at Delhi airport, which mentioned that the customs at Air Cargo Terminal intercepted shipments of over five lakh masks and around 1,000 PPE kits being illegally exported out of the country to the US, the UK, China and the UAE at that time.

The said articles also mentioned the facts that additional items seized were sanitisers and raw material (2,500 kilograms) for making more masks.

The petitioner had contended that the medical equipment seized at the Air Cargo Terminal at Delhi airport can be of great assistance to all COVID-19 fighters and keeping such crucial and vital health-related equipment and materials seized-up and/or confiscated will not serve the interests of the society, in the backdrop of thousands of government officials working in these demanding times.