Mumbai: Bombay High Court on Tuesday said it would hear actor Sonu Sood’s plea to intervene in a PIL where it was alleged that he hoarded and illegally distributed Remdesivir and Tocilizumab injections following requests on social media.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Girish Kulkarni, hearing a PIL on Covid-19 management, was told by his advocate Milan Desai that Sood seeks to be heard. “We’ll hear him on the next occasion,” said the CJ.

Sood’s application said after the second wave in April, there was a scramble for lifesaving medicines. “Therefore he decided to be a conduit between the two i.e connecting the bona fide needy people with the places where the aforesaid drugs were available so that the latter can directly send the drugs to the needy patient,” his application stated.

It added that it involved a two-stage process of requesting patients to submit documents such as Aadhar card, Covid report, doctor’s prescription and verification by contacting the hospitals. He denied purchasing or procuring medicines for trade, adding he “merely guided” the needy patients to the pharmacy where the medicines were available.

Sood said the petitioner, Pune-based film producer Nilesh Navlakha, without making efforts to find out the truth had proceeded to make “false, baseless, reckless, defamatory allegations”.