Expired food probe: Maharashtra suspends five Reliance, Eternal entities; Blinkit CEO named

FILE PHOTO: Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration has suspended licences of five Reliance and Eternal establishments amid a probe into the alleged diversion of expired food products.

India’s food safety authority has named officials of Reliance Group entities 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.

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.”

Reliance Retail and Reliance Consumer are part of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s business group. Zomato’s Hyperpure is a unit of Eternal, which also runs food delivery service Zomato and quick-commerce business Blinkit.

The FDA probe said it found a pattern in which large retail and quick-commerce distribution warehouses handed over expired and customer-rejected food packages to contractors, who passed them on to unlicensed sorting yards. These sorting yards then separated packets that appeared saleable, which eventually reached other retailers and the consumer market, according to case documents from the probe.