Premium Sweets owner, 2 others face arrest warrants for selling substandard food

A Dhaka court dealing with food fraud issued on Sunday four arrest warrants against three food and restaurant businesses for producing and serving substandard and poisonous foods.

The court of Nusrat Sahara Bithi issued two of the arrest orders against HM Iqbal, the owner of Premium Sweets, a high-end dessert and bakery producer, for making substandard tomato sauce and ghee, UNB reports. 

“Laboratory tests found the food substandard,” said Kamrul Hasan, a food inspector at the Dhaka South City Corporation, who filed four cases against the food businesses on Sunday.

The cases were filed under the Bangladesh Safe Food Act of 2013.

The food laboratory at the DSCC found the presence of 1050 ppm of benzoic acid, a preservative, in the tomato sauce collected from the Mohakhali branch of Premium Sweets, far above the permissible limit of 750 ppm.

The presence of solids in the tested tomato sauce was found to be 19.18 per cent, below the minimum level of 25 per cent.

Consumption of food laced with excessive preservatives might lead to kidney diseases and cancer, said the case statement.

Ghee produced by Premium Sweets was also found to be substandard in the government lab test. The ghee was produced using substandard oil or any other product, said the statement of a second case.

The third arrest warrant was issued against Farhana Haque, the owner of a rooftop restaurant called Platform Services Limited at Paltan. Tomato sauce served at the restaurant was found to be substandard and the inspector seized textile-grade color from the restaurant, which was earlier warned several times for making unsafe food.

The fourth arrest warrant was issued against Ahmed Jashim Uddin, the owner of the Hirajheel hotel in Motijheel, for selling the dessert, Finni, illegally using the BSTI certification mark.

The restaurant’s kitchen was highly unhygienic and evidence of the restaurant using excessive flavor was found, said the food inspector.