A tale of trickery

When buying a food item, any conscious consumer would check the expiration date of the product.

But what if the label has been tampered with?

Then it gets quite hard for a consumer to know about the quality of the product she or he is planning to purchase.

In many cases, consumers also have to trust a seller when it comes to buying food products for their families.

Yesterday, the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection busted a confectionery in Rajshahi city, whose owner was found breaking that trust.

Mohammad Anar, proprietor of “Swapna Confectionery”, was selling expired beverages and biscuits at his store after changing the manufacturing and expiry dates.

Not just that, Anar used to collect the expired food items from local markets in bulk quantities and store those.

Acting on a tip-off, a team of the directorate with the help of law enforcers raided the confectionery's storage in Kharkhari Lalitahar area around 1:00pm and seized the expired food products.

Though Anar was not at the scene, manager of the confectionary, Ashraful Islam, along with a group of labourers was found changing and rearranging the labels, said Hasan Al Maruf, assistant director of the directorate.

“Usually, some dishonest businessmen sell date-expired products, but this confectionery was also changing the expiry dates…,” he said.

During the raid, at least 2,000 bottles of various beverages and 500 packets of biscuits -- whose expiration dates had been altered -- were seized and destroyed.

Some 20 seals, stamps and a liquid substance, used for erasing the original labels, were also seized.

The owner was fined Tk 40,000 under the Consumer Rights Protection Act, 2009, said the assistant director.

“We will continue our drives. We need people's support in this regard. They have to be aware and inform us about such irregularities,” he added.