Dairies raided in Ahmedabad for spurious ghee

A day after seizing a mini factory churning out spurious ghee at Motera, the Chandkheda police on Tuesday raided retailers who used to purchase the spurious ghee from factory owner Aswin Patel.

The raids were conducted to bust the whole network of manufacturers and retailers involved in supplying spurious ghee in the city. However, police had to return empty handed as they found nothing suspicious during the raid.

According to SB Trivedi, senior police inspector of Chandkheda, the arrest of Patel on Monday could have alerted the dairy parlours that used to purchase spurious ghee from him.

"We raided three to four parlours of Ghatlodia and Chandkheda, but didn't find anything suspicious," said Trivedi.

On Monday, Chandkheda police had busted a mini factory in Motera, churning out spurious ghee meant to be sold in retail market as real ghee. Earlier, police had learned that Aswin Patel, a resident of Brahmanvada village of Patan district, was running a mini factory of spurious ghee in Ahmedabad.

During the raid, police seized 70 tins of 15 kg each of spurious ghee.

Patel had   taken the house on rent six months back to run the factory. Patel had been making the spurious ghee by adding 80% vegetable ghee, 20% desi ghee, and some colours to make it look real. In total, police seized 1,050 kg of spurious ghee worth Rs20,000 from his factory.

According to police, Patel used to sell the spurious ghee at weddings and to retail dairy parlours of Bopal and Ghatlodia.

Patel used to sell the ghee for Rs120-140 per kg, which was sold to customers at Rs240-260 per kg by dairies.