A TODDLER died after choking on a sweet while on a shopping trip with his mother, a Bolton inquest was told.

Mohammed Akhtar, aged 21 months, died after being given the Troofy Gel sweet, a large candy stick sucked from a tube.

The inquest was told that his mother, Shaneen Akhtar, of Hawthorne Road, Deane, did not realise anything was wrong until the boy arrived back home from the trip into Bolton.

He was lifeless and his jaw was rigid. He was said to have died hours before, but nobody had noticed any distress. His parents thought he had been sleeping.

Two teaspoons worth of a jelly-like substance were found in the back of his throat by doctors blocking Mohammed's airways.

It had come from the sweet which contained a binding agent called konjac and which has since been banned from shops across Europe.

The sweet had been blamed for a spate of deaths across the world and Bolton trading standards officers had tried to clear it from shops in the town.

Up until Mohammed's death on February 16 last year, 14 children were believed to have died after eating the sweet in countries including America, Canada and Taiwan.

The inquest heard that before catching a bus into Bolton, Mohammed's mother had bought him the sweet from a shop in Derby Street, Deane, which he had eaten before arriving in the town centre.

When they arrived home, Mrs Akhtar and her husband Mohammed realised something was seriously wrong.

Karamat Hussein, Mohammed's 65-year-old great-uncle, who described the child as "a lovely boy, very happy and smiley", said: "We tried to wake him up. He was quite cold."

Two months earlier, trading standards across Britain had been warned by the Food Standards Agency that the sweets contained konjac, which posed a choking hazard. On April 4 last year, the confectionary was banned across Europe.

Richard Lindley, group manager for trading standards in Bolton, said he had sent a team out to search for the sweets, but they did not visit the shop on Derby Street, where Mrs Akhtar bought her son's sweet.

Coroner Jennifer Leeming recorded a verdict of accidental death.

, said: "It's clear that prompt action was taken following this tragic death."

Mohammed was later found to be suffering from acute pneumonia.

Dr Anna Kelsey, a consultant paediatrician pathologist at the Royal Bolton Hospital, said there was a chance Mohammed would have died from his illness.

The coroner accepted that but ruled the sweet had played a greater part in the toddler's death.

After the inquest, Mr Akhtar called for posters to be placed in community centres, mosques, temples and churches in a bid to make people aware of the sweets.

He said: "Nobody else's child should ever have to die from these sweets again."