Kolkata, May 1: Meat and chicken are suddenly dirty words in large parts of Kolkata – restaurants, markets and outlets selling frozen products are reporting a major drop in sales.
This, ever since first reports of meat from animal carcasses being processed and sold with ‘normal’ meat.
Over the weekend, the owner of a wholesale chicken outlet at Lake Town near the airport fled before he could be caught.
Friday, a wholesale chicken outlet near the airport was raided and rotting chicken was found in deep freezers.
Last week, tonnes of packaged meat of suspicious origin were found in a police raid, days after some men caught transporting meat from an animal carcass dump yard revealed a racket in spurious, rotten meat in and around Kolkata.
At least 10 men have been arrested and many more detained for questioning.
Friday’s horror story emerged from behind Kolkata’s high rises in Newtown. A wholesale chicken outlet – Dhali Chicken Center – was raided and found full of sickly birds and, worse, five freezers full of rotten meat. Police were tipped off after two men were caught near the airport with 70 kilos of rotten chicken, apparently for sale to local eateries. Newtown is in North 24 Parganas district. The racket came to light at Budge Budge in South 24 Parganas district on April 19.
April 25, twenty tonnes of suspected packaged meat was seized at a cold storage in the Rajabazar -Narkeldanga area in east-central Kolkata.
A full-scale racket is on and big operators may be involved, said Koteswar Rao, superintendent of police, South 24 Parganas.
“They had informers. Whenever dead animals were dumped at a dump yard, immediately a team would come and get the flesh off the carcass. That would be sent to a Narkeldanga cold storage for processing. After then sold to different places,” he said.
Soumen Mondal, a resident near the Dhali Chicken Center, said, “I have bought and eaten chicken from this centre. Their prices were less than the market. if the market price was Rs. 150 a kilo, here they sold for Rs. 140 or 145.”
That was the retail price. At wholesale rates, Dhali’s price was Rs. 50 less than market price.
Police are now investigating a seized note book listing customers with abbreviated name, some of which seem disconcertingly familiar.
Meat samples have gone to the forensics for testing. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation is taking steps to curb the problem at source – put incinerators at animal dumps so carcasses don’t lie around.
But Kolkata is thinking twice before eating a chicken roll or a chicken burger from the shop around the corner.
