A Meena Bazar outlet in Dhaka’s Mohammadpur was fined Tk 1.5 lakh on charge of displaying cigarette adverts and selling “adulterated” frozen meat.

A Dhaka North City Corporation magistrate handed the fine during a drive at the Salimullah Road outlet of the one-stop chain.

This branch of Meena Bazar was fined earlier too by the city authorities two months ago.

Today, the same mobile court of Dhaka north fined two shops at Mohammadpur’s Town Hall market Tk 20,000 for occupying footpath.

In an email response, Shaheen Khan, chief executive officer of Gemcon Food and Agricultural Products Ltd, which runs Meena Bazar, said: “Based on the given guideline [set by the government], we display the products at our store. We are not displaying any advert in our store rather we are selling cigarette from our shelf which is legally approved.”

On adulterated frozen food, he said, “In most of our store, we have back storage frozen facility and front frozen display. When we receive any perishable item, we directly display that in our respective chilled counter and the rest is kept in the back store frozen condition maintaining the same standard.”

“In the wet market, this whole cold chain system is missing and they cannot deliver the best quality perishable items to the customer. We do it not to store our food for long period rather to maintain the same standard till the day end because we cannot display the whole day’s consumption at once,” he further explained.