British restaurateur gets 6 years in prison after peanut allergy death

LONDON — The owner of a curry house in Britain with a “cavalier attitude” to food safety was found guilty Monday of causing the death of a customer who had a severe allergy after he was served a dish containing peanuts.

The owner received a six-year sentence.

It marked the first time in Britain that someone has been convicted of manslaughter over the sale of food.

The customer, Paul Wilson, 38, ordered chicken tikka masala, to go, from the Indian Garden restaurant in North Yorkshire in January 2014, having specified “no nuts” in his order.

Wilson had diligently avoided peanuts and dishes made with them ever since he had a severe reaction to eating a chocolate bar with peanuts when he was 7 years old. He was “very, very careful,” his mother, Margaret, said, especially when ordering his favorite meal.

Wilson had eaten food from Indian Garden before, and the restaurant had gone so far as to write “no nuts” on the lid of his curry container.

But after just one bite of what would be his last meal, Wilson had an allergic reaction. His roommate found him slumped on his toilet at home, where he had gone into anaphylactic shock and died.

Prosecutors said that the restaurateur, Mohammed Zaman, 52, who owns six restaurants, was about 300,000 pounds, or about $434,000, in debt. He had cut corners, they said, replacing almond powder in his recipes six months earlier with a cheaper mix of ground nuts and hiring untrained, undocumented workers to turn out the popular curry dishes at his restaurants.

Another customer with a nut allergy had to be treated at a hospital after eating at Zaman’s restaurant three weeks before Wilson’s death. Like him, she had been assured her meal would not contain nuts, prosecutors said.

Zaman was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence in the death of Wilson, and six food safety offenses. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

He had a “reckless and cavalier attitude to risk,” the prosecutor, Richard Wright, told a jury at Teesside Crown Court.

“Time and again, he ignored the danger and did not protect his customers,” Wright said at trial, adding that Zaman had “put profit before safety, and he cut corners at every turn.”

Zaman had said that he left his employees to run his restaurants, including ordering the ingredients and preparing the dishes, and that he was not even on the premises when the deadly curry was prepared.

Shaun Page, a detective inspector on the case, said that Zaman had a duty to serve safe food to his customers and that Wilson’s death was “totally avoidable.”