A mobile court in Meherpur on Wednesday sentenced the owner of a mango orchard for treating mangoes with formalin to keep the summer fruit fresh.
The court also fined Lalu Mia, a trader of Chinta Bazar of the district's Gangni upazila, Tk 5,000 for treating the mangoes of his orchard with the chemical. The court destroyed 280 kilograms of chemically treated mangoes.
Executive magistrate of the mobile court Razibul Hasan said that acting on a tip-off that Lalu Mia was treating mangoes with formalin, they conducted an operation in his mango orchard in the morning.
The mobile court found that Lalu and his employees were treating mangoes with toxic chemical and putting the fruits in cartoons for marketing those.
As Lalu Mia admitted the offence, the court realised Tk 5,000 from him as fine and destroyed all the 280 kilograms of chemically treated mangoes.
Contacted, Meherpur Mango Traders Association joint secretary Mutalib Hossain said that the tendency of treating mangoes with formalin was less than that of the last year. He said that a group of unscrupulous mango orchard owners were plucking green mangoes from trees in a bid to make a good profit. They were later treating the green mangoes with chemical so that those remain fresh for many days and get ripped gradually.
Helal Uddin, the owner of the largest mango orchard in Meherpur, urged the district administration to be more vigilant to prevent chemical contamination in mangoes.