NHRC notice to Union home and health secretaries over quarantine centres and whistle-blowers

Acting on a petition that cites the "plight of inmates at quarantine centres and COVID-19 hospitals", besides attack on journalists and whistle-blowers, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notices to the secretaries of the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The petition has been moved by lawyer and human rights activist Radhakanta Tripathy who has cited several instances of deaths, injuries, sexual offences, snake bites, electrocution and even suicides in the quarantine centres across India. In the plea, Tripathy has also pointed out brutal assaults, arrests and threats to media persons who are "risking their lives to convey the news of mismanagement...expose corruption in the procurement of medical supplies...victimisation of the general public and undignified treatment of the dead".

"Virtually it's nothing, but custodial deaths and tortures as quarantine centres, COVID hospitals are the creations of the State," the plea of Tripathy states.

The petition adds that scores of people have been killed and many more attacked and victimised for coming forward to expose corruption and wrongdoing in the last six years, even as the Centre has notified the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014, and subsequently amended it. "The Act, however, is yet to be in force."

Tripathy's petition has quoted several instances of corruption, including the Delhi High Court's judgment in litigation between importers and distributors over COVID-19 rapid test kits that has allegedly exposed the scam in the purchase by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

( With inputs from ANI )