CAIT slams Flipkart over acid sale, demands legal action

New Delhi [India], December 15 (ANI): The Confederation of All India Traders came down heavily on e-commerce giant Flipkart in connection with the acid attack incident on a 17-year-old girl in Dwarka where the accused had reportedly bought the acid on the e-commerce platform.
The traders’ body’s Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal has urged Delhi Police Commissioner Sanjay Arora to take immediate cognizance of the matter and initiate legal proceedings against the e-commerce platform as selling acid is completely illegal and should be done only after proper due diligence, CAIT said in a statement.
CAIT President BC Bhartia said, “Had this been done by a small shopkeeper/Kirana store, the police would have booked a case against the shopkeeper, However, e-commerce entities such as Amazon and Flipkart who are habitual offenders go scot-free. Government must tighten regulation for e-commerce marketplace companies and make them accountable for such lapses.”
Both trade body officials added that there should be heavy penalties including cancellation of their e-commerce license in case of such defaults.
E-commerce platforms, including Flipkart, cannot be called data intermediaries by any stretch of the imagination as they do warehousing, advertising, delivery, logistic, and payment settlement, which CAIT said does not fall in the domain of data intermediaries.
“For any violation of the seller, they should have concurrent or fallback liability,” CAIT said in the statement. (ANI)