A Supreme Court lawyer on Sunday filed a writ petition with the High Court, seeking its directives for the authorities concerned to enact a formalin control law in the upcoming parliament session starting September 12.
In the petition, lawyer Eunus Ali Akond sought the highest punishment – death penalty – to the persons involved in using the life-threatening chemical with food items.
The petition urges the court to direct the authorities concerned to check imported goods for formalin and those to provide every market with equipment to check the use of the chemical in food items.
Secretaries of the law, home, health and environment ministries, the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution and the inspector general of police were made the defendants in the petition.
Akond later told the Dhaka Tribune that the commerce ministry had already drafted the Formalin Control Bill 2013 aiming to stop the sale of formalin-treated food items and ban the import, production and sale of hazardous chemicals without licence.
Javed Ahmed, joint secretary of the commerce ministry and head of the committee that drafted the law, said the draft laid down a provision of 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Tk100,000 or both as the maximum punishment for violation of the law and five years’ jail term as the minimum punishment.
