News Desk |
The Sind food authority (SFA) raided the warehouse of sealed Arizona Gill Restaurant in Zamzama Karachi and confiscated the expired meat stashed at the facility. Two brothers of age 18 months and 5 years had died after consuming the food from Arizona Grill restaurant and candy from a shop outside Chunky Monkey amusement park.
According to Medico-legal Officer from Jinnah Hospital, Dr. Shiraz the post-mortem of the minors suggests the death was caused by food poisoning, GVS reported earlier.
According to the SFA, the restaurant had been served a notice two months ago, to improve the hygiene conditions.
On a tip-off raid, Sindh Food Authority (SFA) recovered expired meat from the godown of the eatery. Mead had expired in as far back as 2015 and as per SFA Director Abrar Sheikh, the management of restaurant had not disclosed the existence of the warehouse before.
https://twitter.com/SherySyed_/status/1062341834137980928
Arizona Grill was cooking with sub standard meat that had expired 4 years ago. This was stored in 9 deep freezers. Clearly criminal negligence but ofcourse they were able to get away with it because they would have paid the inspectors to pass all quality assurance tests.
— Riya (@Tweets_By_Riya) November 13, 2018
When the officials of SFA reached the site, they found that the restaurant supplies were being secretly moved. The authorities recovered above 50 kgs of expired meat and bottles juice concentrate; the bottles had expired a year back as per officials. A man named Waheed Ali was taken to custody who is said to be the caretaker employed by Arizona Grill at the warehouse.
A First Information Report (FIR) has been registered at the Sahil Police Station on the complaint of parents of the deceased children. The grandfather of the deceased kids in his statement before the police said that the kids had four different meals on the day of the tragic incident and it was not the first time they had a dine-out at the same restaurant.
According to Medico-legal Officer from Jinnah Hospital, Dr. Shiraz the post-mortem of the minors suggests the death was caused by food poisoning, GVS reported earlier.
According to the SFA, the restaurant had been served a notice two months ago, to improve the hygiene conditions. The said restaurant was not registered and SFA’s Director Abrar Sheikh said that the authority would start registration of eateries from the end of this month.
Read more: ‘Expensive’ poisonous food takes life of two minors: who is responsible?
The Sindh assembly speaker taking notice of the incident had formed a three-member committee– comprised of Sohrab Sakhi, Sanjay Parwani and Shanwer Ali Khan Isran– to oversee the performance of SFA. The Parliamentary committee has reportedly prepared a questionnaire, will meet today and record the statements from the relatives of the affected family and will supervise the investigation into deaths of children.
It is saddening to know that there is no established forensic lab in Sindh and forensic investigation & research was conducted at Liaquat University Medical & Health Sciences which is not equipped with any of the latest tools.
Nusrat Shah Abbasi, member provincial assembly of Sindh, severely criticized the Sindh government in assembly today (Wednesday) for not having an equipped forensic lab despite the allocation of budget for the establishment of the laboratory.