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Bench quashes food adulteration cases

Mohamed Imranullah S.

MADURAI: The Madras High Court Bench here has quashed a food adulteration case filed against the manufacturer, marketing dealer as well as retail seller of a branded pickle on the ground that there was a delay of two years between seizure of the product and lodging of a complaint before a judicial magistrate.

Allowing a petition filed by them, Justice R. Mala said that the pickle had crossed the expiry date thereby denying an opportunity to the accused to get the sample tested by the Central Food Laboratory.

“In view of such a long delay in launching prosecution, the accused are put to serious prejudice,” she said.

The judge pointed out that the Food Inspector of Palani Municipality in Dindigul district had inspected a shop owned by one of the accused on October 13, 2007 and took sample of tomato garlic pickle.

The sample was sent to the Public Analyst on the next day and a report received on January 21, 2008.

As per the report, the pickle contained Aspergillus Flavus (a fungus) which should not be present in the food item as per Appendix D of the Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Rules, 1955.

However, a complaint was lodged with the Palani Judicial Magistrate only on January 29 this year and hence, the present petition.

Allowing another petition, the judge quashed a case against a wholesale dealer and retail vendor of custard powder in Madurai on similar grounds.

It was pointed out that the Food Inspector of Madurai Corporation had also taken nearly two years to lodge the complaint before a judicial magistrate here.

In this case, the samples were taken on March 17, 2005 and sent for analysis on the same day.

The Public Analyst had sent his report, a month later, stating that the sample contained synthetic food colour Tartrazine Sunset Yellow and Carrosine to the extent of 600 parts per million which was higher than maximum permitted limits of the final food for consumption.

The dealer and vendor were accused of violating Rule 30 of the PFA Rules. They were also found to have misbranded the custard powder because the packets were not labelled in accordance with the rule. But, a complaint was lodged with the Judicial Magistrate-I here only on January 5, 2007.

Last month, Ms. Justice Mala had quashed three other food adulteration cases pertaining to Madurai and Tirunelveli Corporations on the same ground of delay in lodging complaints.

Those cases related to misbranding of wheat flour, honey and Mysore gram.

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