India's food safety authority has named officials of Reliance retail and consumer units and of Eternal's Blinkit and Hyperpure units, including Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa, in a probe over expired food products that have allegedly re-entered the food supply chain, according to case documents reviewed by Reuters.
The Food and Drug Administration of Maharashtra state, home to Mumbai, has led a crackdown on food safety under its chief Tukaram Mundhe, 51, including shutting down some of Mumbai's most popular eateries as well as outlets of Domino's and Pizza Hut for poor hygiene. The state agency has also suspended the permit of a McDonald's outlet.
The latest case, which has led to a police complaint by the food safety authority, involves large retail and quick-commerce companies, which sell products to millions of households in the world's most populous country.
Maharashtra's Food and Drug Administration, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters, said its officials visited some warehouses of Reliance Retail, Reliance Consumer and Zomato Hyperpure, and that company officials could not provide verifiable proof that disposal of expired food was actually carried out by their contractors.
"The disposal agencies ... do not destroy the stock," the case document alleged.
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In the case of a Zomato Hyperpure warehouse, a company representative named a contractor as its disposal agency which FDA officials could not trace, according to the documents.
Reliance and Blinkit did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
"Any attempt to divert expired, damaged or consumer-rejected food products meant for destruction back into the market is a serious matter that demands strict scrutiny and accountability," Maharashtra's FDA chief Tukaram Mundhe told Reuters.
"No company, brand, business or individual is above the law when it comes to food safety."
INDIA'S INTENSIFYING CRACKDOWN
Reliance Retail and Reliance Consumer are part of billionaire Mukesh Ambani's business group. Zomato's Hyperpure is a unit of Eternal that also runs food delivery service Zomato and quick commerce business Blinkit.
The FDA probe said it found a pattern where large retail and quick commerce distribution warehouses handed over expired and customer-rejected packages of food to contractors who passed the food to unlicensed sorting yards. These sorting yards then separated out saleable-looking packets, which eventually reached other retailers and the consumer market, according to case documents from the probe.
"The chain thus runs from company warehouse to disposal agency, unlicensed yard, broker, retailer and consumer."
The Maharashtra FDA on Thursday suspended the licences of five establishments in the state - three Reliance and two Eternal entities, the case documents said.
Enforcement of food safety laws has traditionally been weak in India and the recent round of extensive crackdowns has garnered large-scale public support.
In August, Indian authorities raided an illegal operation in Mumbai that faked expiry dates and nutritional information on original food products manufactured by PepsiCo, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Unilever, so they could be exported to other countries.