Photo: AshishSinghPatil / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Police in Thane have registered an FIR against 10 people, including senior executives of Reliance Consumer Products, Reliance Retail, Blinkit and Zomato Hyperpure, after Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alleged that expired, damaged and customer-rejected food meant to be destroyed was instead finding its way back to shop shelves.
The case was filed at Shanti Nagar police station under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Among those named are V Subramaniam, a whole-time director of Reliance Consumer Products, and Blinkit chief executive Albinder Dhindsa. The rest include company staff, operators of a disposal agency and local suppliers in Bhiwandi.
What the raids found
Seven FDA teams carried out coordinated inspections across Thane and Pune districts on October 14 and 15, checking warehouses, waste contractors and retailers. Officials seized stock worth about โน48 lakh. More than โน24 lakh of it came from a disposal yard in Bhiwandi, about โน4.92 lakh from a Reliance Consumer Products warehouse at Vadpe and roughly โน7.81 lakh from a Zomato Hyperpure facility at Usatane. The FIR lists stock worth about โน33.71 crore as property linked to the case.
According to the FDA, the companies could not produce verifiable proof that their contractors had actually destroyed the expired goods. At the Vadpe warehouse alone, officials recorded around 4,659 kg of expired products and over 1,400 kg of damaged stock. In the Hyperpure case, a company representative named a disposal contractor that FDA officials could not trace.
The alleged chain
Investigators describe a pattern in which large retail and quick-commerce warehouses handed rejected stock to disposal agencies, which allegedly issued destruction certificates without the goods being destroyed. The food was then allegedly taken to unlicensed sorting yards in Bhiwandi, where packets that still looked saleable were picked out and sold to brokers and suppliers. Officials said they found expired and leaking products on sale at an unlicensed shop in Gulzar Nagar, Bhiwandi, which had no purchase bills. They also flagged mismatched quantities and inconsistent details in disposal records.
After hearings on October 15, the FDA suspended the licences of five establishments, three linked to Reliance and two to Eternal, the parent of Blinkit and Hyperpure. Four unlicensed premises were ordered to stop operating. Reliance and Blinkit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
No company, brand, business or individual is above the law when it comes to food safety.
Tukaram Mundhe, Maharashtra FDA commissioner
Why it matters
Quick-commerce apps and large retail chains now supply groceries to millions of households, and the case raises questions about how their returned and expired stock is tracked once it leaves the warehouse. It is also the biggest move yet in a crackdown under Mundhe, which has seen the FDA shut popular Mumbai eateries, suspend licences of fast-food outlets and ban the sale of loose spice powders across the state this week.
Concerns are not limited to Maharashtra. On Friday, Delhi’s Food Safety Department said inspections of storage facilities run by online food delivery and retail companies had turned up expired products, flies and a lizard, and that 19 of 59 desi ghee samples tested were unsafe.
What happens next
Police will now investigate the allegations in the FIR. The FDA has collected samples from the seized stock and issued orders barring its movement, sale or destruction while the probe continues.
