This was stated before the Delhi High Court today. Acting Chief Justice of the high court Mahinder Narain has on the request of the city government appointed Justice Anil Dev Singh to hold the inquiry.

The commission was instituted considering the gravity of the situation where the authorities have failed to detect the source of adulteration of mustard oil in the capital. The cases of dropsy were now being reported from other parts of the country as well.

The CBI is independently probing the reasons and circumstances which led to the sudden outbreak of dropsy countrywide. The CBI has been asked by Home Minister L K Advani to also investigate the conspiracy aspect of the case.

In all 385 cases were registered with the Delhi police. Subsequently, the CBI took over 34 such cases where deaths were reported.

The prevention of food adulteration department of the Delhi Government has collected 561 samples so far of which 422 were analysed and 203 of them were found to be adulterated. Even popular vanaspati brands -- `Panghat' and `Rath' -- were found to be contaminated. Of the 22 vanaspati samples collected, 20 were found to be adulterated with argemone oil, according to Delhi Government standing counsel in the high court Arvind Nigam.

The first dropsy case in the capital was reported on August five and ever since hundreds of people were taken ill.

Till yesterday, 55 people including manufacturers, vendors and distributors of `dhara', `kanodia', `scooter', `hathi', `parivar', `jumbo' and `elephant' were prosecuted under section 17 (4) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act. Non-bailable warrants have been issued against all these accused.

Nigam told a division bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice K S Gupta that nine mobile vans have been stationed near the offices deputy commissioners and other prominent places on the nine districts of Delhi to get mustard oil tested free of cost.

Food inspectors have also contacted patients in hospitals to obtain requisite information from the patients about the brand they consumed before falling ill.

According to Dr Madhuri Sharma, deputy direction general of health services, the deaths in dropsy takes place because of renal and heart failure. Dropsy adversely affects kidney and its treatment was more symptomatic in nature.