Anotice was sent to the chief executive officers of Flipkart and Amazon by the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) over the ‘easy availability of acid’ after a teenage girl recently faced an acid attack in the national capital.
In its letter, the DCW highlighted, “The accused bought acid through Flipkart.” Expressing its concern over the availability of acid on the e-commerce platform, it said that “acid is easily available on Amazon and Flipkart, which is illegal”.
The panel further appealed to the organisations to take urgent steps in this regard.
The DCW, in its letter, stated, “Please inform the reason for the availability of acid on the e-shopping platform. Please provide complete details of the sellers who have placed acid as a ‘product’ on your platform.”
The women’s panel also asked the e-commerce giants to submit a copy of the licence permitting the sale of acid online, along with a copy of the policy which was adopted by firms on the sale of products which are government regulated. The panel further inquired whether the e-commerce platform had collected the photo IDs of those who had bought acid.
On the morning of Wednesday, a 17-year-old teenage girl was on her way to school accompanied by her sister when acid was thrown on her by two men on a bike in the Mohan Garden area of West Delhi. The acid attack was caught on CCTV and stirred a huge outrage.
Hours after the incident, three men were arrested by the police and the teen was admitted to the Safdarjung Hospital, where the doctors confirmed that the patient suffered 8% burn injuries.
The main accused, Sachin, resides in the same locality as the victim. Special Commissioner of Police Sagar Preet Hooda said that the accused started stalking the victim three months ago after the latter rebuffed the former’s advances.
“Sachin ordered the acid on the e-Commerce website Flipkart and was with his friend (Harshit Aggrawal) while attacking the girl. The bike used in commission of crime and a phone have been recovered,” the police stated in the report.
