Hyderabad police bust tea adulteration racket, 10 held

Hyderabad police busted a tea powder adulteration racket and arrested 10 persons during raids at 15 locations. The accused mixed synthetic chemicals and reused materials with low-quality tea, posing serious health risks to consumers.

Hyderabad: In a major operation, the H-FAST team of the Hyderabad police busted a tea powder adulteration racket in the city and conducted raids at 15 locations in the last two days. The police nabbed 10 persons who were running the racket.

According to the police, during the raids, the accused admitted to mixing harmful synthetic chemicals with inferior quality tea powder and repackaging the adulterated product under different brand names. “The adulterated tea powder was then supplied and sold to other dealers and tea vendors while falsely projecting it as a genuine product. These activities pose serious health risks, including stomach disorders, allergies and long-term health complications,” said DCP Task Force Gaikwad Vaibhav Raghunat.

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Investigation revealed that the 10 persons had different roles and were involved in unsafe and illegal practices such as mixing artificial colours, jaggery juice, used tea powder and expired tea powder to improve appearance, the official said.

The accused procured low-quality tea powder from vendors in Kolkata, Kerala and Assam and adulterated the same using synthetic food colours such as sunset yellow FCF, tartrazine and total dye colour.