Official sources said today that district officials assisted by food inspectors and police had during the last five days conducted raids on over 750 places across the State to seize the ``adulterated'' cooking mediums.

The sources said the samples of the seized edible oils were being collected to send them to different laboratories for test.

The district magistrate were supervising the operations in their respective districts.

The Chief Minister had on Friday ordered ban on sale of both packed and unpacked mustard oil till ``laboratory examination'' of samples of the oil being sold in open market was done.

In the State capital, district magistrate Rajbala Verma led the team to conduct raids on departmental stores and premises ofstock-holders to collect samples of edible oils for laboratory examinations.

The district administration had so far seized cooking oils and other grocery items worth over Rs 8 crore by conducting searches on around 45 business premises, they said.

In Marufganj business locality, a raiding team stumbled upon packets of poisonous chemicals. According to experts, ``if the chemicals are mixed with ordinary oil, it will look and smell like mustard oil''.

``The mix of the chemicals in small quantity cannot cause any harm but an inadvertent excess use of the chemicals may prove to be fatal,'' experts opine.

A Begusarai report quoting official sources said over ten oil tankers filled with over 50 lakh litre mustard oil value of which being estimated to be around one crore were impounded during the last two days and samples of the oil sent to laboratories.

Over 285 tins of edible oils were seized from business premises and factories at Hajipur township in Vaishali district since yesterday, the districtmagistrate R N Prasad said.

Reports of seizure of several tankers fully loaded with edible oils continue to pour in from different districts in the state.

According to State health department sources a few more fresh dropsy cases were identified at Madhepura and Bhagalpur as an intensive campaign continued to detect such cases and take preventive measure to check further spreads of the disease.

Over 200 people including traders and labourers have so far been arrested during the raids at different places in the state.

The State Government had also banned supplies of mustard oil from outside Bihar till samples of existing stocks of the cooking oils were tested in laboratories.