Food safety officer Dr Ramesh Chauhan said on Tuesday he inspected the Sector 90 restaurant on March 5 and served a show-cause notice to explain why such an error was made.
“Since they did not respond to the notice, we have cancelled the licence under Section 32 of the Food Safety and Standards Act on March 26. The eatery is not functional right now,” Chauhan said.
A criminal case was also registered last month, and three of the accused were arrested and later released on bail. Three couples – Ankit Kumar and his wife Neha Sabarwal, Manik Goenka and his wife Preetika, and Deepak Arora and his wife Himani – went to Laforestaa on the night of March 2 to celebrate a birthday.
After their meal, the restaurant staff offered the group mouth freshener. All of them except Ankit consumed translucent granules served to them, and within minutes, the five started feeling burns in their mouth and bleeding.
“We later realised the item served as mouth freshener was dry ice. My wife and our friends started vomiting and bleeding from their mouth,” Ankit had stated in the police complaint.
Those injured were admitted to hospital and discharged after a few days.
Police registered an FIR under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 328 (causing hurt by means of poison) of the IPC on March 3.
A day later, Laforestaa’s manager Gagandeep Singh, a resident of Kirti Nagar in Delhi, was arrested. Waitress Amrit Pal Kaur who mistakenly served the dry ice was on the run, but she was held in the second week of March.
And on March 28, police arrested the restaurant’s owner Honey Sreedhar (39).
“All three were produced before the court and they are currently out on bail,” said SI Hari Kishan of Kherki Daula police station. According to police, packs of dry ice were used at the eatery to store meat. But the food safety officer said it was also used for decorative purposes while serving drinks and some dishes.