RAJSHAHI, Jan 8: As the demand for date juice made 'Gur' (molasses) has been increased for making traditional Pitha or cakes in the city and rural areas, a section of dishonest gur-makers and traders were engaged in preparing adulterated gur in Charghat and Bagha upazilas of Rajshahi and in Boraigram upazila of Natore district.
It is learnt, Bagha, Charghat and Boraigram upazilas are famous for preparing traditional date-juice gur or khejur-gur for a long time. But, with the passage of time, the number of date palm trees has been dwindled for several reasons and at the same time the demands of date-gur was increasing day to day.
Sources informed, due to massive urbanisation, there was a huge increase of brick-kilns in every district. Most of the owners of brick kilns use blocks of date palm tree to fire the furnaces of those brick kilns. Moreover, no one is now interested to plant date tree in their fields or near homesteads or even road side resulting a drastic decrease of date palm trees everywhere in the district.
Taking the opportunity of shortages of date juice supply, many dishonest gur makers were now engaged in preparing adulterated date-gur by using low quality chita gur (waste remains after preparing the sugar or gur from sugar cane juice), chemical colour used for dying textiles, hydrous and sugar.
A mobile court fromed under the supervision of additional deputy magistrate Razzakul Haider and executive magistrate Nazmul Alam conducted raids in two adulterated gur making factories and watched date juice was being prepared there by using those toxic chemicals and dye at Boraigram upazila on Sunday morning. Camp commander of RAB-5 Natore, major Shibly Mostafa along with journalists were also present during the raid.
Acting on a tip off, the RAB team raided an adulterated gur preparing factory at Kalikapur of Boraigram at 6-00 am early morning on Sunday. They kept the factory gheroaed till 12-00 noon when executive magistrate of Natore Nazmul Alam arrived at the scene and through the mobile court awarded the owner of the factory Shafiqul Islam Shafique (45) Tk 100,000 fine and one year of non-rigorous imprisonment or two more months of imprisonment in default to pay the fine. The court also awarded a fine of Tk 20,000 to Ricky Kostha (34) , the owner of the land where the factory was situated.
Earlier around 10-00 am, the mobile court awarded owner of adulterated date-gur factory Korban Ali (38), son of Azahar Ali of village Bhabanipur of Boriagram with Tk 50,000 fine and his brother Sajdar Ali Tk. 15,000 fine and recovered 24 adulterated date-gur, four containers (barrel) of rotten, liquid (jhola) gur, 32 maunds of sugar (made from sugar cane juice), two litres of toxic chemical dye, 28 kilogramme of limestone and materials for preparing adulterated gur.
Villagers requesting anonymity informed, the adulterated gur factory is situated beside the house of local Municipal councilor Muhith Kumar Sarker and he is also a co-sharer of the trade and trader Shafique had been conducting the adulterated gur trade under the shelter of Muhith but Muhith refuted the allegation and said, Shafique is his friend, not a business partner.
Owner of adulterated gur factory Shafique informed, by boiling liquid chita gur with hydrous, sugar and lime stone, the adulterated date juice was prepared. He would add chemical dye with those gur after preparing those.
He further said, he used to purchase sugar (made from sugar cane) at Tk.48 per kilogramme and by mixing it with chita gur, hydrous and colour he made the adulterated date-gur and sold that at Tk. 80 to 90 per kilogramme to the traders of Dhaka and Chittagong.
Locals informed, for last four months, Shafiqul, son of Khabir Uddin of Lalpur, took lease of house of Ricky Kosta at Christian Palli and was making adulterated date-gur there in cooperation with his 16 employees and workers.
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