MUMBAI: Bombay high court on Tuesday expressed “serious concerns” over recent cases of fake vaccination drives in the western suburbs.
It directed the state government and the BMC to formulate a policy to ensure strict monitoring and checks on vaccination camps by housing or other societies to prevent any repeat of what occurred at a Kandivli housing society.
A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Girish Kulkarni said, “People can stoop so low is beyond our imagination and that they will play even with vaccine.
There must be some control of the government to ensure what has been injected is the vaccine and not plain water or a spurious vial.
Imagine the plight of a person who is not vaccinated with the original vaccine.
What could be the state of his/her mind?” “How did it happen?” HC asked the BMC.
It was hearing a PIL filed by Siddharth Chandrashekhar seeking the court’s intervention over the issues faced by citizens in booking vaccination slots on the CoWin portal.
His advocate, Anita Castellino, cited media reports on fake Covid vaccination drives in Kandivli, Versova and Khar and said urgent intervention is needed.
Senior counsel Anil Sakhare for the BMC submitted the police had begun the probe and agreed with the HC that “it ought to have never happened” and that a preventive mechamism is needed.
The HC said, “Do you have a health official for each ward? He can also monitor and do checks.” The court said the issue was indeed serious wherein some fraudsters had played with the lives of people to make money and asked the government to submit progress reports of the investigations conducted into such incidents and asked it to unearth the racket and find the kingpin indulging in a “novel way” of defrauding people amid the pandemic.
“In these kinds of matters of fraud in vaccination, the state should be very much serious and should not delay the investigation.
Let the BMC and the state government form a policy on an SOS basis so that no innocent persons suffer.
The most unfortunate part is even in current times when the entire humanity is suffering, some people are committing fraud.
It is unimaginable.
It is indeed a serious issue to play with the lives of people,’’ said the HC.
The court also asked the state government and the BMC to inform whether a system can be put in place through state health officials or ward health officers in the city to keep track of the vaccines being released to organisers of camps at schools, residential societies and other places.
The court also sought a progress report of the investigations by the next hearing on June 23.