HYDERABAD: Calling fruit traders who use the carcinogen calcium carbide to ripen fruits “worse than terrorists,” the Hyderabad High Court on Wednesday ordered a thorough probe into the use of this poison and pulled up the authorities for turning a blind eye.

Six days after the high court had asked the respective governments to conduct immediate raids in fruit shops across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, a division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale and Justice S V Bhatt appointed senior counsel S Niranjan Reddy as amicus curiae to find out more on the illegal practice and come up with a solution.

“For earning some extra rupees, you are putting scores of lives at risk. Such traders are worse than terrorists, killing generations of people with slow poison,” the acting chief justice said.

Calcium carbide is a chemical compound whose two main products -- acetylene, a colourless gas widely used as a fuel and calcium cyanamide, used as fertiliser in agriculture -- are extremely harmful to the human body.

Farmers pluck fruits before they ripen naturally and ship them to the markets where these are treated with calcium carbide -- which acts as a hormone stimulator and thereby hastens the ripening process.

While doctors have said for decades that calcium carbide is a proven carcinogen which contains traces of arsenic and can cause cancer, kidney disorders and other neurological disorders, successive governments have done little to stop the illegal practice. Worse, many traders inject harmful chemicals (sweeteners) in mangoes, papaya and apples to make them taste unnaturally sweet.

On August 14, the court asked authorities in the twin states to immediately raid fruit markets after it took cognizance of a local news report which said most of Hyderabad’s fruit markets were selling artificially ripened fruits.

Following raids conducted on three markets, the Telangana special government pleader A Sanjeev Kumar told the high court bench that inspection teams found rampant use of calcium carbide. “The inspecting officials found calcium carbide wrapped in papers and kept in the middle of heaps of fruits in the shops. We seized the carbide, sealed the shops and sent the fruits in such shops to labs,” said Kumar. “The reports from the labs stated that these fruits are unsafe for consumption,” he added.

When senior counsel P Gangaiah Naidu intervened on behalf of the fruit merchants and tried to defend them, the bench retorted that traders can even sell raw mangoes, leaving the job of ripening to consumers, but could not use calcium carbide. The only way to allow the fruits to ripen is thorough the natural process, it observed.

The bench also asked amicus curiae S Niranjan Reddy to study the issue and inform the court about the impact of carbide on the health of human beings and their nervous system, especially children.

“Till now we were asking children not to eat junk food. We have now reached an unfortunate stage where we have to ask them not to eat fruits also,” Justice Bhosale said.

The bench also snubbed AP counsel D Ramesh who told the court that their inspections have found no presence of carbide in Andhra markets. The errant traders have to face penal action apart from suspension of their licenses, the bench said and directed the AP, Telangana as well as the Centre to file affidavits within two weeks detailing inspections carried out and steps taken to prevent the use of carbide in fruits.

