The U.K. restaurateur who inadvertently killed a customer by hiding the fact that his curry contained peanuts is going to prison for that incredibly stupid move. Mohammed Zaman, owner of the Indian Garden in Yorkshire, was found guilty of manslaughter and gross negligence, and the jury told him today that he will serve six years in jail. Zaman apparently swapped a cheaper nut mix into his chicken tikka masala, in place of the almond powder he thought had gotten too expensive, but he didn’t share this news with patrons. When Paul Wilson, a 38-year-old bar manager, ate the dish, he went into anaphylactic shock and died. Prosecutors said Zaman had been told to label the menu, and that three weeks before Wilson’s visit, another customer with peanut allergies had suffered a reaction to food employees allegedly swore was nut-free (she was hospitalized, but survived). Wilson’s takeout reportedly had the words “no nuts” written on the lid as well.
The judge said Zaman remained “in complete and utter denial” that he’d done anything wrong. The substitution was one of Zaman’s ways of cutting costs because he was in almost half a million dollars of debt, the BBC says. (Another was employing untrained illegal workers.) The trial supposedly marks the first time a restaurant owner was tried for manslaughter in a customer’s death.
[BBC]
