Berhampur: Police have seized huge quantity of adulterated and duplicate pickles of reputed brands and arrested one person in this connection in Berhampur of Odisha’s Ganjam district.
Bada Bazaar police in the city and Food Safety Officer (FSO) of Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) conducted a raid on the manufacturing and processing unit in Brajaraja Nagar on Monday. During the raid, duplicate pickles of different popular brands including Priya, Sri Durga and Prime were seized. Police have arrested Pintu Sahu of Ambika Nagar who was running the processing unit in a rented house.
Berhampur SP Saravana Vivek M said Sahu was manufacturing and processing various types of pickles by adding dangerous chemicals and adulterating those with non-permitted synthetic colours and other materials.
Sahu used to procure the pickles of reputed brands from market and adulterate those with chemicals. After resealing, he was selling those in high price. Thus he was cheating the people for the last 1 year, the SP said.
Huge quantities raw materials for pickles, half processed pickles and finally processed pickles were also seized during the raid. Different chemicals, non-permitted colours and other adulterated materials that are very dangerous to human health were seized.
The samples of all types of pickles will be sent to the food testing laboratory in Bhubaneswar for examination and opinion. Further investigation is going on to arrest others involved and to identify the supply chain and their involvement in the crime, said the SP.
