The High Court has asked authorities to clarify whether the wheat imported from Brazil is suitable for human consumption.
A High Court bench of Justices Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Taher Md Saifur Rahman passed the order yesterday in response to a writ petition.
The court asked the secretary of the Food Ministry and the director general of the food directorate to elucidate within 72 hours on the quality of the imported wheat. The bench fixed July 5 for holding further hearing.
A lawyer named Pavel Mia filed the petition on Monday on the basis of reports published in a number of national dailies.
In the petition, Pavel sought the court’s directive for getting the “rotten wheat” tested at the labs of Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute (BSTI) and Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI). He also demanded a probe by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in the allegations.
Recently, media reports said that thousands of tonnes of wheat imported from Brazil and supplied by Singapore-based contractor Olam International was of substandard quality.
A couple of government studies concluded that the wheat imported from Brazil in February and March is of sub-standard quality and a significant volume was rotten.
One of the studies by the food directorate found that six out of the 30 tested samples of the Brazilian wheat had living insects.
The other test by the BCSIR found that all the supplied samples contained higher amount of shrunken and broken kernels than the supply specification.
After news on rotten when surfaced in the media a few days ago, political and rights organisations demanded resignation of Food Minister Kamrul Islam, who, despite having the studies, claimed before media that there was nothing with the imported grains.
Earlier, the minister had said that the government was not going to order wheat from Brazil again because of the poor quality.