An owner of an Indian restaurant in North Yorkshire, England, was sentenced to six years in prison after he served a curry dish containing peanuts to a customer with an allergy, resulting in his death.
Mohammaed Zaman was sentenced Monday after being found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence among other food-safety offenses, The New York Times reported. The incident happened in January 2014 when Paul Wilson, 38, ordered chicken tikka masala from Zaman's restaurant, Indian Garden, and specified he couldn't have any nuts in his order.
Wilson had visited the restaurant previously and was given a container with "no nuts" written on top of it, the Times added.
He was found by a roommate dead after going into anaphylactic shock, prosecutors said.
According to authorities, Zaman cut corners by replacing almond powder in his recipes with a cheaper mix of groundnuts and hired undocumented workers to put together his curry dishes. There was an incident with another customer with a nut allergy three weeks before Wilson’s death.
"Time and again he ignored the danger and did not protect his customers," Richard Wright, told a jury at Teesside Crown Court, according to the Times.
Zaman had about $434,000 in debt, which led to his cutting corners, the Times reported. He also had a tendency to not be at the restaurant, allowing his employees to run the operations, and was not there when the curry was served to Wilson.
"Paul Wilson was in the prime of his life," Judge Simon Bourne-Arton told Zaman, according to the Yorkshire Post. "He, like you, worked in the catering trade. He, unlike you, was a careful man."
Read more at The New York Times.
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