New Delhi: Asserting that the Right to Life under Article 21 of the Constitution includes the right to healthy food, the Orissa High Court has declined to grant bail to a person who has been arrested on the charges of food adulteration.
While rejecting the bail plea, a bench of Justice SK Panigrahi noted that the accused was involved in the sale and marketing of spurious paneer. The bench also held that unscrupulous activities carried out with a profit motive is detrimental to society and those need to be viewed seriously.
“The Right to Life, the most important fundamental right of every citizen guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, includes in it the right to healthy food and therefore, any food article which is hazardous or injurious to public health is a potential danger to the fundamental right to life,” the bench observed.
It has been stated that the accused along with his accomplice had brought synthetic paneer from Kolkata to Cuttack. The police had arrested the accused in December last year. However, his accomplice managed to escape.
The court further noted that the colour, texture and odour of the paneer did look deceptive. The police seized the paneer and questioned the accused, who disclosed that he had purchased the product from Kolkata to sell it in Cuttack market. The police sent a sample of the seized paneer to the food safety officer in Cuttack for examining its genuineness.
Taking into account the report of the food analysts, the health officer of Cuttack Municipal Corporation informed the police that the seized paneer was not fit for human consumption as per the definition of the term ‘substandard quality’ as defined under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
Paneer as a food item is required to contain at least 50 per cent of milk fat to be safe for human consumption, but it was found to have only 10.8 per cent of milk fat, indicating thereby that it was some substance other than paneer which render it not fit for human consumption.
“In India, we are too lenient with health issues. In fact, food safety is crucial for both progress and economic development of a country,” the bench said.