Spurious products make way into market

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, October 9

Ahead of the festival season, the problem of spurious ghee and food items in the region has come to haunt the residents again. The Bathinda Police have registered a case against the owner of an Australian dairy located on the Gillpati village road here for supplying spurious ghee to people.

A case under Section 420 of the IPC has been registered at the Thermal police station against Yogesh Kumar of Faridkot district. The police got a tip-off that the accused was making spurious products at his dairy. Later, the police conducted a raid and seized 6,555 kg spurious ghee.

Last year, during the festival season, food safety teams had cracked down on 11 ghee manufacturing units. The licences of eight firms in Bathinda, namely New SK Agro Industry, Ashoka Agro, Anmol Food Rampura Phul, Shri Balaji Trading, BS Agro, Goyal Sons, AR Agro Industry and Merry Agro, had been cancelled. The licences of two firms of Mansa, namely Ganesh Agro Foods and Shri Krishna Foods, and one of Barnala, namely Jugal Kishore and Company, had also been cancelled.

Last month, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had denied bail to Bathinda District Health Officer Ramesh Maheshwari, who is facing allegations of taking bribe from milk sellers, grocery shops, dairies and ghee factories for not collecting samples from them.

Meanwhile, taking a serious view of violations of the Food Safety and Standards Act, Additional Deputy Commissioner-cum-Adjudicating Officer (Food Safety) Rajdeep Singh Brar has slapped a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Fine Food Products company over violation of norms.

Brar said a team led by the District Health Officer had taken samples of various products. He said violations had been found in the report sent by the food analyst. He said products like Utsav Cooking Medium, Home Day Cooking Medium and Star Fresh Cooking Medium had been fined Rs 1 lakh each over non-compliance to the standards set under the Food Safety Act.

Raids are conducted throughout the year to check the supply of adulterated food, but some systemic loopholes make it an uphill task for the Health Department to enforce the rules strictly.