Four vendors were temporarily detained by Battambang’s Sangke district police on Friday after complaints from residents that the dried squid and stingrays they were selling were of poor quality and partly made of plastic.

Sangke district police arrested four men, Keo Sao, Keo Keng, Chin Thorn and Yit Phon, following the complaints.

They confiscated a total of 162 kilograms of dried seafood from the vendors, according to acting district police chief Sum Sovann.

One suspect told police that none of their customers had ever had problems with the seafood, which they imported from Vietnam.

“However, we grilled the dried squids and rays and compared with the ones from the local market . . . and theirs smelled and shrunk like grilled plastic while ours didn’t.”

The four men were released after three hours of interrogation and signing an agreement preventing them from selling fake products.

The dried seafood is currently being tested in Phnom Penh to determine whether it is indeed made of plastic, Sovann said, “but they haven’t released the results of the examination yet”.