CAIT demands action against Amazon for alleged sale of marijuana on e-commerce platform

CAIT said that if marijuana can be sold through Amazon then “they would be encouraged to trade in illegal supply of arms or other anti- national activists and money laundering.” (Representative image)

Traders' body CAIT has demanded the Central government to take immediate action against e-commerce giant Amazon for the alleged use of its platform to sell marijuana.

The CAIT also demanded that National Crime Bureau (NCB) should take action against Amazon since it acted as a seller, collected money, posted on their website, and earned commission over the sale of marijuana.

“It is most shocking news for the traders and the people of India that Marijuana worth more than 1 crore of rupees was sold through Amazon e-commerce portal and in turn, Amazon got 66 percent commission. This sensational revelation was uncovered by Madhya Pradesh police” CAIT said in a statement on November 14.

The MP police, on November 14, said that it had busted an interstate drug peddling gang that was using Amazon’s website for moving more than 1,000 kg of marijuana from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh to three states, according to a Hindustan Times report.

“Before registering a seller, Amazon ought to have done KYC to know about the genuineness and creditability of the seller. Further, Amazon ought not to have allowed the sale of illegal items like Marijuana,” CAIT National President B. C. Bhartia & Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said in the statement.

They further said that “we are at loss to understand that why a technology giant does not use its Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to identify  sale of illegal items while they continue to use these technologies to identify and copy the products of poor MSMEs and Indian Manufactures for creating their own private label products.”

The traders’ body said that if marijuana can be sold through their portal then “they would be encouraged to trade in illegal supply of arms or other anti-national activists and money laundering.”

“Amazon had been claiming to be an intermediary under the Information Technology Act and therefore had been seeking the benefit of safe harbor provisions. However, by allowing any seller to sell a banned/illegal item like Marijuana, accepting payments, facilitating and assuring delivery, and consequently earning profits in the form of sales commission, they cannot be called an e-commerce intermediary by any stretch of the imagination,” the statement mentioned.