The Haridwar district court has slapped `3 lakh as fine on the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee for preparing food with sub-standard chilli powder. 200 students had fell sick after eating the food.
According to the food safety department, Haridwar-based additional district magistrate (ADM) Ravneet Chima penalised the IIT-R on March 12.
On September 10, 2013 around 200 students, living in Rajendra Bhawan hostel, complained of stomach ache and vomiting after consuming meals cooked at the hostel mess.
The food safety department took notice of the incident and made a surprise inspection of the hostel’s canteen on September 19.
“We gathered samples of edible items from the canteen and after inspection, it was found that the food items were unhygienic. We then served a show-cause notice to the institute authorities asking why they had not taken a licence from the food safety department,” said food safety officer Dilip Jain.
The chilli powder, one of the collected food samples, was later sent to the food and drug testing laboratory at Rudrapur on March 10, 2014 where it was found to be of sub-standard quality.
It was again sent to the Pune-based national food and drug testing laboratory that said in its report that the chilli powder sample was not pure and harmful if consumed.
“On the basis of the Pune laboratory’s report we registered a case before the ADM court on August 23, 2014 against three different authorities of the institute under various sections of the food safety and safety act (FSSA), 2006,” added Jain.
The authorities who were penalised include the chairman of the coordinating committee of hostels, chairman of the central purchase committee of the institute and chairman and chief warden of the mess working committee.
“The court slapped a fine of `1 lakh each on them,” said Jain.
If this is the situation in an IIT, we can not think of in other hostes
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