Delhi Police Bust Rs 20 Lakh Fake Food Racket

While in the midst of an unrelated raid, the racket is unearthed

What was supposed to be a joint investigation to establish the involvement of children in the labour market in Delhi's Okhla Phase-II ended up revealing a much more sophisticated system – the deliberate manipulation of expiry dates on internationally-branded, expired food products that were to be made available for re-sale across India and abroad.

The operation was handled by a team of Okhla Industrial Area Police Station led by Inspector Anil Malik, superintended by ACP Anil Sharma and overall guidance of DCP Dr Hemant Tiwari, who directed sustained and intelligence-based actions to break the entire criminal network.

The raid was conducted in association with Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Badarpur, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and NGO Mission Mukti.

This is an investigation that changed the course

Based on specific intelligence of alleged child labour, officers have gone on to inspect the premises of M/s Westened Corporation Pvt. Ltd., X-57, Okhla Phase-II. There were no minors discovered.

What investigators did discover, however, was a massive, systematic scheme to make old products seem new.

The police say the accused would buy international food items close to the date of their expiry or already expired from the market at a very low price and with the help of chemical thinners would efface the original manufacturing and expiry dates and re-date the products with a special machine fixed at the shop.

The size of the Seizure

The recovered stock included a wide range of goods, such as Thums Up, Fanta, Bournvita, Horlicks, ghee, Maggi noodles, two-litre bottles of cold drinks and beverage cans and Paper Boat juices worth over Rs 20 lakh.

The accused also tampered with the nutritional labels and added fake batch numbers, barcodes and MRP stickers to make the repackaged food appear authentic, officials said, a kind of "calculated artifice" or clever deception that can trick the average consumer.

The people named in the Case

Six other people were arrested with him, police say, and the owner has been identified as Darshan Singh Sachdeva, who is described as a septuagenarian – the manager, Nitesh Bhardwaj, the accountant, Narender Kumar, the operator, Kapil, the warehouse keeper, Lucky Ojha, and the supervisors, Prem Yadav and Pawan Kumar Yadav, were all part of an operation that was carried out with near-corporate discipline.

An FIR with registration number 358/26 has been lodged at PS Okhla Industrial Area under Sections 275, 318(4), 336, 340 and 61(2) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which pertains to food or drink adulteration for the purpose of sale, as well as those which threaten public health.

Wider Public Health Concern

The investigators said that the tampered goods were not only sold at open markets but also at the e-commerce platforms that are operational across India and abroad, with the worry that the consumers may end up buying consumables that "in reality, had passed their safety window.

Delhi Police again affirmed its ongoing efforts to ensure public health and consumer safety, stating that it is continuing its investigation to identify the source of the racket and its possible assistant(s).

What Comes Next

The focus now must be on how far the network extended, meaning if other outlets, warehouses or online sellers were aware of the tampered stock or not and if they were anyway, wittingly or otherwise, in on the distribution. Until the case becomes a commonplace reality, it's a good reminder that there's no such thing as overlooking due diligence.