Adulteration or mass murder?
I congratulate Mohammad Atatul Hoque for his letter entitled "Mangoes or poison?" published in The Daily Star. Adulteration of food is a very old practice of the dishonest traders. They were more or less mixing water with milk, adding lower grade oil with mustard oil etc. in the past. These were not that much harmful to health. But now very harmful chemicals are mixed with foodstuff by the sellers for various reasons. These chemicals cause different diseases and may lead to death.
The seller knows fully well the bad effect of the chemicals. So this can be termed as deliberate murder of people and must be treated by law as such. Mr. Hoque suggested severe punishment. I say it must be death penalty. It seems very severe but once one or two men are given death sentence, then there will be no more such crime and no necessity of a death sentence will arise in future. We often demand 'Exemplary' punishment for horrendous crimes so that there is no repetition of the crimes.
The old time adulterations were not harmful for health but were merely 'cheating', so the punishment was not severe. But now it amounts to mass murder. So, there should be 'Death Sentence' as an exemplary punishment.
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