The owner of a temporary cracker stall at the Tallah Park Bazi Bazar has been arrested for allegedly selling banned crackers on Thursday, police said.
According to court guidelines, only green crackers can be sold and purchased during Diwali, violating which could attract penal charges.
An officer of Tallah police station said they received information about a specific stall from where alleged banned crackers were being sold.
“On checking, we found there were 260 pieces of banned tubri in shop number 44. We have seized the crackers weighing around 65kg and arrested the stall owner,” said the officer.
Police identified the stall owner as Arabinda Parikha, 37, a resident of Anath Nath Deb Lane in Tallah. Four Bazi Bazars have been set up in Kolkata police jurisdiction where according to order, only green crackers can be sold, following which the number of takers of stalls has gone down as a large number of cracker manufacturers in the state do not manufacture green crackers.
Although only the manufacturers who manufacture green crackers are being allowed to hire stalls at the bazi bazars, the police have been asked to maintain vigil if any violations are reported even within these firecracker markets.
The Telegraph reported on Friday that police officers have been asked to install scanning apps on their smartphones to check the veracity of crackers by scanning the QR code on the cracker boxes.
Only if the QR Code generates a certificate issued by the CSIR-NEERI undersigned by the competent authorities, the cracker could be considered genuine, as police officers have been told in guidelines issued by the pollution control board.
An officer in Lalbazar said although all the police stations have been asked to remain alert against banned crackers, it was practically difficult to scan the entire stock of firecrackers at the Bazi Bazars.
“It is not feasible to scan all the boxes of all the brands,” the officer said.
Hence, the police are carrying out random checks to find out if the crackers being sold at the firecracker markets are green crackers or not.
