MULTAN: Police seem reluctant to register a case against an industrialist after recovery of subsidised sugar hoarded at his biscuit factory.

A team of the district administration led by Assistant Commissioner (city) Khwaja Umair Mahmood raided a biscuit factory at Mumtazabad on Central Jail Road and recovered huge stock of sugar. The team arrested an official and later in continuity of the action to trace the supply chain of the sugar mafia, conducted a raid at the grain market and the godown of the supplier who is in the list of the sugar dealers of the district government, says a handout.

Dealer Mian Muhammad Shakeel escaped when the raid was conducted. The dealer supplied 725 bags of imported sugar to the factory owner.

Deputy Commissioner Amir Karim Khan said the district administration would lodge an FIR against the suspects.

Sources said that after the first raid, the AC directed the market committee management to have a case registered against the factory owner and other suspects but police refused to lodge the FIR. The district administration, they said, was also approached by influential people with a request to withdraw the name of the factory owner from the application.

Sources said another raid was conducted on the godown of the dealer to cover up the matter and another application was submitted to the Mumtazabad police by Market Committee Secretary Muhammad Ejaz Saleem Manais. They said the Shah Shams police returned the earlier application to the district administration which submitted a new application while replacing the name of the owner with the names of store in-charge Irfan and Yaqoob Masih, a sweeper of the company.

In his application Manais stated that 480 and 240 sugar bags were provided to the dealers on Oct 25 and 27 at a cost of Rs86 per kilo with the direction to sale it to the retailers at Rs88 per kilogram while maintaining the record of retailers. He stated that the suspect was provided 720 sugar bags but when the record was checked it showed 725 bags which itself was a proof that the record was fake over which a special price magistrate was asked to check the record.

He stated the magistrate reported that the contact numbers of most retailers mentioned in the record were fake and the persons never remained in the sugar business while the phones of few retailers was either closed or not being attended.

He stated that on Oct 28, (another) 480 bags were provided to the suspect which he unloaded at SM Foods for hoarding instead of his godown. He alleged that the suspect violated the section 11 of the Punjab Prevention of Hoarding Act 2020 by hoarding the sugar at the biscuit factory.

Shah Shams SHO Tassaduq Hussain said the FIR was yet to be lodged as there was some technical issue. He said he was waiting for a new application for registering a case.

The deputy commissioner told Dawn that although the administration was under immense pressure, the FIR had been lodged against the employees of the company. He said there was no reality in the report of changing the application.

AC Mahmood said the name of the owner was excluded from the FIR as when the raid was conducted he was not in the country. “He still is not in the country that’s why including his name in the FIR can hamper the legal process,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2021