Apr 4, 2013

International Food Safety News - Expired food case accused held guilty

The Muscat Primary Court yesterday issued its verdict convicting those accused of selling expired food products. The accused were sentenced to a term of imprisonment, ranging from one to two years; fines; and deportation.

The judgments are as follows:
1. Jiartna Cindrella George, Jai Singh Dwarkadas, Ranjit Kumar Dwarkadas, and Ratan Singh Dwarkadas Kalyanji, all Indian nationals, were charged with selling expired and rotten food products that are harmful to human health. They were aware of the condition of the food products and the fact that they were violating the provisions of the Consumer Protection Law and its executive regulations.

The court sentenced them to two years of imprisonment and fined them OMR400 each, upon convicting them of storing food products in inappropriate conditions that were contrary to the requirements of the FoodSafetyLaw. It also convicted them of violating the Omani Labour Law for hiring non-Omani labourers without a licence, for which the court charged them OMR4,000 each and demanded that they pay the travel expenses for deporting the 8th and 9th convicts—Shandan Kumar Teluk, Bangladeshi national, and Mohammad Na'eem Abdulqadir, Pakistani national—to their home countries.

The penalties for each crime were combined, and the convicts will be deported from Oman after they have served their prison terms. While the rotten food products have been confiscated, their shops will be closed. The accused have been pronounced innocent of the offence criminalised by Article 294 of the Penal Law.

2. Of the remaining five accused in the case, Samir Sen Sunil Sen, Bangladeshi national; Nirmal Kumar Baliwal, Indian national; Pigo Balet Milan, Bangladeshi national; Shandan Kumar Teluk, Bangladeshi national; and Mohammad Na'eem Abdulqadir, Pakistani national, were charged with participating in the crime of selling expired and rotten food products and violating the provisions of the Consumer Protection Law and its executing regulations.

The court sentenced Samir and Mohammad to one year of imprisonment and fined them OMR400 each; Nirmal, Pigo, and Shandan were sentenced to two years of imprisonment and were fined OMR400 each. Shandan and Mohammad were found guilty of violating the Omani Labour Law by illegally working for an employer other than their sponsor and were sentenced to one month of imprisonment—a penalty that will be combined with that of their other crime before they are permanently deported along with Samir, Nirmal, and Pigo.

The group was pronounced innocent of the other charges brought against them.
The judgements were pronounced in the presence of all the accused except for Jiartna Cindrella George, who received his judgement separately.

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