Adulterated food floods city market, citizens in a tizzy

VIJAYAWADA: Health experts and residents of Vijayawada are concerned over the quality of food items being sold in the city in the light of seizure of 2,700 kg of spurious ghee during a raid at a private transport office at Nunna, by Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and police in a joint operation.

The people fear that necessary commodities like groceries, fruits, vegetables and even sweets and confectionaries are adulterated and misbranded and is afraid that consuming such food will affect health adversely. Recent raids have raised serious apprehensions among the residents about ghee and other food items available in open market.

Manufacturers are mostly targeting economically weaker sections and adulterated food items are marketed in the colonies and city outskirts. Consuming such food items can cause intestine related ailments. “For greed of fast money, some of them are producing and selling adulterated products in open market. We don’t know the right place to get quality food items,” said D Padma, a resident of Satyanarayanapura.

During the raids, Nunna police had found that Sunil Kumar, the kingpin, did not have necessary permissions from FSSAI to operate ghee manufacturing unit. He was running an illegal ghee manufacturing unit in Surampalli village and was marketing it in AP and Telangana under popular brand names like Krishna Pure Ghee, Sri Lakshmi, Nandini Ghee and Madhura.

Assistant commissioner of police (ACP- North) K Sravani said that two other persons, Pochepalli Venkateswara Rao and Chitturi Seetharamayya, were working under Sunil for past two years and Ghee worth `6 lakh and machinery worth `25 lakh were seized from the manufacturing unit in Surampalli village near Nunna. “He did not have the license to operate the unit. The spurious ghee was mixed with boiled palm oil, and vanaspathi in the ratio 10:40:50.” The officer also said that a manhunt was initiated to nab the prime accused Sunil. 

Despite police monitoring and inspection by food safety officials greedy manufacturers are continuing illegal practices putting public health in danger. “We have registered over 200 criminal cases against adulterators for endangering public health. More such raids will be conducted to put an end to the adulteration menace in the city,” said FSSAI assistant controller N Poornachandra Rao.