A Goodmayes dad is fighting a £400 fly-tipping fine arguing that his rubbish went astray after it was “maliciously stolen” or possibly carried away by the wind.

Castleton Road resident Shafiq Mustafa’s appeal against a Redbridge Council fine for fly-tipping was rejected last Thursday (January 3).

The 51-year-old was landed with the fine after two bags of rubbish were found around 300 metres away from his home near to J.J.S. Food and Wines, in Goodmayes Road, on Sunday, December 16 last year.

“Why would I leave half-full bags of rubbish on my own road with my details in that can be traced back to me?” he told the Recorder.

“It makes no sense for me as a hard-working father who has been living here since 1975.”

He said that he always leaves his green waste by his front door on Fridays at 6am before he goes to work.

He accepted that one of the sacks found belonged to him – a black bag filled with leaves and some packaging labelled with his name and address.

But he denies dumping it nor the blue plastic bag found next to it, containing food waste and a beer can, which he suspects belonged to the real culprit.

“My initial thought was the wind might have blown the rubbish out of my garden,” he said.

“But my suspicion is now that someone had deliberately moved the bag without my permission from my front garden, had a look inside and then dumped it down the road.”

Shafiq told the Recorder he has been pleading with neighbours and nearby businesses to review their CCTV footage to get to the bottom of what happened.

But he has not yet found footage covering the exact spot where his waste was discovered.

However, footage he took on Friday (January 4) also appears to show two women seemingly rummaging through piles of electrical waste in his neighbour’s front garden two doors down from his home.

Lamenting the council’s “zero-tolerance” policy on fly tipping, he said: “[Their] attitude is ‘we will fine you for hundreds of pound even if someone stole it off your property.’”

Mr Mustafa’s case is currently under review, a council spokeswoman confirmed.

She said: “Fly-tipping is a serious offence which blights our neighbourhoods and costs the council huge sums of money to clean up.

“Taking tough action through measures such as penalty notices is a vital way to keep the borough clean, deterring those who find it acceptable to dump rubbish on our streets.

“We advise anyone who feels they have been issued a fine incorrectly to contact us.”