The incident came to light after a local Shri Bahadur Gurung shared the image of the substandard rice in his Facebook post. The locals in the area have returned the rice that they had received as relief.

The locals through telephone informed that two tractors had brought the rice sacks as relief and of them 15 sacks of rice were found rotten. “After opening the sacks we found lumps of rice that had turned black,” said a local, Marsingh Gurung, “We have asked them to take back the rotten rice.”

Gurung said that the distribution of rice is being done only after opening the sacks. “We are only distributing rice sacks that seem to be edible,” he said.

Meanwhile, representatives from Red Cross and WFP have been deployed to look into the incident.

Earlier also, the rice distributed by WFP in quake-hit districts were found rotten and inedible. Following complains of quake victims falling sick after consuming such rice, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Tuesday directed government authorities to distribute edible relief materials received from various countries and institutions to earthquake victims only after conducting proper laboratory tests.