Ahmedabad: 1 booked for processing hazardous plastic

AHMEDABAD: The prevention of crime branch of the city police has caught a 33-year-old man from the Ramol area for illegally processing hazardous plastic waste. He used to make compressed plastic chunks and sold them to units at GIDC estates.
According to PCB officers, Sajid Ansari, a resident of Jantanagar Society in Ramol, was caught on Monday. The officers said they had received an input that he had been processing hazardous plastic waste in an open field behind an ONGC well in Ramol.
The cops said that he had a machine to process hazardous waste including polybags and plastic canisters.He used to process the material in the field which he had taken on rent from a man named Punja Thakor at the monthly rent of Rs 7,000.
Ansari dumped the waste and hazardous water in the ground which affected the people living in the area, police officers said. The groundwater and soil had been polluted, they said.
According to the officers, Ansari set up a firm named SK Enterprise by installing a shed in the field. Cops said that Ansari did not have any licence or permit from the Gujarat Pollution Control Board.
According to the FIR filed with Ramol police, the PCB cops also called in officers of the forensic science laboratory who took samples of some black fluid found in the field. Police have booked Ansari under the IPC’s sections 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health) and 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance). The Environment Protection Act has also been invoked.