Who's liable for selling non-ISI marked pressure cookers

Pushpa Girimaji

Last month, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) ordered the recall of 9,30,000 Insignia pressure cookers because of inaccurate volume markings, which could result in users filling the cookers beyond the intended safe capacity, thereby resulting in hot food spewing out when the cooker was vented or opened. The recall followed 17 cases of burn injuries reported by consumers. This is not the first time that CPSC has ordered the recall of unsafe or faulty pressure cookers to protect consumer interest.

But here in India, the consumer protection regulator’s efforts to recall only a few thousand pressure cookers sold without the mandatory quality and safety certification have run into a legal quagmire, with major online market platforms challenging not only the authority of the regulator to issue those orders, but also their own liability as e-commerce platforms. And for over a year now, the ‘recall and reimburse’ orders have been temporarily kept in abeyance by the Delhi High Court.

The consequences of using sub-standard and defective pressure cookers are best understood in the light of the deaths, injuries and damage to property from pressure cooker blasts reported from various parts of the country every year.

On October 30, a faulty pressure cooker tragically cut short an 18-month-old child’s life and grievously injured her mother. According to reports, Vijula Devi and her daughter Mishti Kumari were visiting relatives in Khagaria district of Bihar. They were in the kitchen when the pressure cooker burst and parts of the cooker as well as the boiling food hit the mother and child. Both were rushed to hospital but the child could not be saved.

In an equally horrific incident, on July 31, 40-year-old Kiran Kanwar, a resident of Jaipur, died of fatal injuries after the pressure cooker in her kitchen burst. According to the police, fragments of the cooker struck her with such force that they got lodged in different parts of her body. The scalding food from the cooker also burnt her, resulting in her painful death. Last year, 39-year-old Shibu Daniel of Idukki district, Kerala, died when the pressure cooker in which he was preparing breakfast for the family, exploded, and the lid hit his head with great force.

One would expect businesses, particularly the large e-commerce platforms, to wholeheartedly support the quality control order passed by the government, prohibiting the sale of non-ISI marked pressure cookers from February 1, 2021, and ensure that no vendor on their platform violates the law. Instead, they were found selling non-ISI marked pressure cookers in large numbers, in contravention of the Domestic Pressure Cooker ( Quality Control) Order, besides various provisions of the Consumer Protection Act, the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules and the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act.

Worse, when the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), constituted under the Consumer Protection Act, imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh — a very small amount compared to how much some of them had earned from the sale — and directed them to notify the consumers who were sold non-ISI certified pressure cookers, recall these and refund the cost to the consumers, instead of complying, they challenged the order before the Delhi High Court. They claimed immunity from liability as intermediaries under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act!

Of the five online market players — Amazon, Flipkart, Shopclues, Snapdeal and Paytm Mall — only Paytm complied. The rest got interim stay orders against recall of the pressure cookers. Amazon, as per the CCPA order, sold on its site 2,265 non-ISI marked pressure cookers after the quality control order came into effect and earned a total fee (or sales commission) of Rs 6,14,825 from it, while Flipkart sold 598 pressure cookers and earned a fee of Rs 1,84,263. Meanwhile, Cloudtail, an e-tailer on Amazon, which sold 1,033 pressure cookers without the ISI mark and was also slapped with a similar order from the CCPA in November last year, appealed against it before the apex consumer court. It next challenged before the Delhi High Court the dismissal of its appeal by the apex consumer court. The High Court asked Cloudtail to pay the penalty and make ‘efforts to retrieve the cookers’, but said failure would not entail prosecution under Section 88 of the CP Act till the date of next hearing, fixed for January 11, 2024.

CCPA has a strong case and online marketplaces will find it difficult to escape liability, even under the IT Act. However, one can expect a long legal battle. At stake is the consumers’ right to safety, defect-free goods, and the right to be protected from unfair trade practices.

So, consumers should also now play their part for the protection of their rights — all those who have been sold non-ISI pressure cookers post February 1, 2021, should file class action suits against the online marketplaces as well as sellers, demanding not just refund, but also compensation, punitive damages and costs of litigation.

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