Selling illegal arms and weapons in India is a crime and that applies to online portals too. In yet another such incident, Maharashtra’s heritage city Aurangabad Police have seized 28 weapons including swords, choppers, knives, kukris, and guptis, etc, which were purchased from Flipkart’s online website.
According to a Hindustantimes report, the Aurangabad police’s Crime Branch has arrested seven persons in this case, including the manager of a courier company. The probe further revealed that these arms were booked through Flipkart and were delivered from Punjab’s Amritsar, through a courier company, Estacort Services Pvt. Ltd.
Taking this matter on a serious note, leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil of the Congress said the online trading of weapons was both “illegal” and “dangerous”.
Patil demanded that the online shopping portal Flipkart should be banned as it was found to be the source of purchase for arms seized in the city. He further said that the state government must order an inquiry into the whole thing and bring all the guilty to book.
Aurangabad Police Commissioner Milind Bharambe also said that he would recommend to the Home Ministry to ban such online purchase of arms.
It is worth to be mentioned that Aurangabad city has recently witnessed communal riots so police and security are on high alert. Two persons were killed in clashes between groups of two communities over an issue of illegal water connections in the first week of May.
In a separate report, Bipin Bihari ADGP (Law and Order), Bipin Bihari, said “We are exploring all legal options for booking Flipkart for providing and transporting, knowingly or unknowingly, such dangerous material. Today, they managed to buy choppers and knives, tomorrow it could be drugs or explosives or any other hazardous material.
According to a senior officer from DGP’s office, Flipkart may be booked under Section 120 (B) of the IPC for criminal conspiracy.
Time and again, e-commerce companies have faced criticisms over its no-control policy on products available on their platforms.
In a similar incident, the Hyderabad Task Force had detained 12 people over purchasing of arms, including swords and blades from online marketplace Snapdeal.
