ISLAMABAD : Sept 8 : A larger bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) comparing Justice Ijazul Ahsan , Justice Mandukel and Justice Shahid Waheed will take -up sugar hoarding and artificial shortage case on September 12 for heading .
The cause list issued by SCP Registrar office suggested that the petition for taking action against a number of sugar mills including JWD Sugar Mills of Ishtehkam e Pakistan Party (IPP) chairman , Jahangir Tareen, Tandilanwala Sugar Mills of PTI leader and first cousin of Jahangir Tareen , Humayun Akhtar Khan , Shaikhoo Sugar Mills , a chronic defaulter mill on payments to the growers, Hamza Sugar Mills of Sharif family , Two Star Industries (Pvt) Limited , Fatima Sugar Mills of Fatima Group , Adam Sugar Mills, Ittehad Industries , Noon Sugar Mills , Three K Industries, AlMoeez Industries, Thal Industries , GB (Pvt) Limited , Baba Farid Gung Sugar Mills and many other mills .
The sugar mills have been accused of hoarding of sugar stocks and creating artificial shortage of the commodity to jack up its prices and make windfall profit . The sugar industry is more or less involved in hoarding of sugar stocks and create artificial shortage of the stocks in the market and jack up the rates of the commodity to make undue profit.
The cases against the sugar mills come and go, but hoarding and tempering of the market by the sugar mafia never ends. The sugar mafia has applied the same trick this time again . It managed to get permission of 0.250 million tons of sugar in Shahbaz rule on the pretext that sufficient stocks were available to meet local demand at the rate of 650000 tons of sugar per month till new crushing begins in November next ,but soon after the export the commodity prices which were hovering around Rs 125 at retail level rushed to Rs 230 and in some areas to Rs 250 per kg in just one week. A Punjab government report on current sugar crises suggested that the sugar mafia extorted Rs 80 billion from the public in just one month. Thanks to jacking up the commodity prices .
The sugar mafia is so powerful that side by side to sugar export it smuggled around 0.5 million tons of sugar to Afghanistan in the last 5 months. Only sugar smuggling to the tune of 0.5 million tons , Pakistan suffered a loss of $ 350 million as the commodity prices in international market have touched maximum level of $ 750 per tons .
The money that could come to the government treasury through its legal trade poured in the smugglers pockets. The sugar smuggling to Afghanistan started in March and it continued without any break till September when the caretaker government launched a crackdown to smuggling of sugar to Afghanistan just one week ago.
In sugar crisis, Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) is a party also . It did not take any notice of soaring of the commodity prices from Rs 125 to Rs 250 a kg except issuing a statement that it can play a role to check the cause of sugar crisis . This statement itself is a proof of CCP’s criminal negligence in the case of sugar crisis.
