Ex-DAE official arrested with 512 litres of edible oil
With edible oil fast vanishing from retailers' shelves in the wake of a supply crunch, a retired government official turned out to be on the list of hoarders after stockpiling 512 litres of soybean oil.
Layekuzzaman, former deputy assistant agriculture officer of the Department of Agricultural Extension, hoped to make a hefty profit during Ramadan by selling the illegally stockpiled oil worth Tk 81,984.
On Friday, Mohammadpur police team arrested the 60-year-old and seized 512 litres of oil from a Lalmatia flat, said Biplob Kumar Sarkar, deputy commissioner (Tejgaon Division) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, at a press conference yesterday.
Layekuzzaman lives in a flat in Lalmatia and looks after his father-in-law's one next door. That is where he had stored the oil.
During primary interrogation, Layekuzzaman showed a receipt of Surya Enterprise, in Mohammadpur's Krishi Market, from where he bought 40 litres at Tk 159 per litre.
"He forged the receipt and included prices of more oil. We will try to find out from where he bought the rest," Biplob added.
A case was filed against Layekuzzaman under the Special Powers' Act with Mohammadpur Police Station.
Biplob added, "We will also interrogate the trader who sold 40 litres of oil to one person."
The DMP has started surveillance this week on business establishments and warehouses in the capital so that no syndicate can hoard the products.
"We will monitor if anyone is stockpiling to create an artificial crisis… If we get any such clue, we will inform the department concerned, like the Directorate of National Consumer Rights' Protection, and then conduct drives," DMP Commissioner Shafiqul Islam told The Daily Star.
"There is a tendency to increase prices of essentials like edible oil, pulses ahead of Ramadan. We will look into whether anyone is doing illegal business."
The prices of oil, onion, potato, beef, mutton, chicken, flour, cardamom and sugar have increased within a week, according to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.
The logical price chart of the Department of Agriculture Marketing shows that the average prices of 39 daily items have shot up almost 17 percent from last year.
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