Gwalior-based Harish Chand Tiwari could be the first person to convince Supreme Court of India to shut down a cell phone tower on the claims that the electromagnetic radiation from the tower had given him cancer.
According to a TOI report, 42-year-old Tiwari, who works as a domestic help at the residence of Prakash Sharma in the Dal Bazar area of Gwalior moved the Supreme Court against a BSNL tower 'illegally' installed on a neighbour's rooftop since 2002.
Tiwari said that the BSNL tower which was less than 50 metres from the house where he worked had exposed him to harmful radiation for the last 14 years. The exposure had led to Hodgkin's Lymphoma, claimed Tiwari.
In the order, a bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha said, "We direct that the particular mobile tower shall be deactivated by BSNL within seven days from today."
Last year, Minister of Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that radiation emissions from mobile towers don't have adverse impact on human health and India should have more mobile towers to boost network.
"There is no scientific basis and truth stating that radiation from mobile towers and handsets causes adverse impact on human beings and animals. There are rumours all around the country that due to mobile towers, people will be suffering from cancers and other diseases but it is completely baseless and unfounded," Prasad had said.
Connecting the menace of call drops with lack of mobile phone towers Prasad had said, "In dearth of mobile towers, there will be more call drops. Can we live without mobile phones? Can we afford to do that? If you don't want that to happen, please allow mobile towers to come up in your areas."
"There is no impact on humans. There is no empirical evidence of any danger to human life because of all this. Even World Health Organization (WHO) after 30 years of studies has revealed there are no such threats," Prasad had said in the Lok Sabha last year.