Hyderabad: Justice T Vinod Kumar of the Telangana high court on Tuesday sought to the stand of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) on a petition that charged the police with creating obstacles in the sale of ethylene sachets for artificially ripening fruits like mangos. Following the furore over usage of calcium carbide for the purpose, the FSSAI had banned the use of carbide because it was proved to be harmful.
In its place, it suggested the use of ethylene to ripen the fruits. Stating that though had obtained permission to sell ethylene sachets, police in Telangana are creating hurdles in its sale, SGS International firm approached the high court. We are selling FSSAI approved Ethylene ripening sachets in India for ripening mangos because it was approved by the FSSAI to ripen mango, banana and papaya fruits, the firm’s partner Rajesh Selarkar said in his plea. Though the police booked a case against us in 2018, later they closed it after they received a report from the forensic lab that our sachets are not harmful, he said.
Now the Government of Telangana appears to be supporting a dealer who is selling a similar product with a brand name En-ripe, the petitioner said. In order to support and promote the En-ripe dealer, the Hyderabad Police are publishing banners to not to use the product of SGS International and to use only the product of En-ripe. Now they have again booked cases against the small mango traders, he said. As a similar plea by another firm too was pending with the court, the judge directed the registry to tag it along with the current plea and posted both of them to Wednesday.
