Are you someone who relishes drinking tea? Do you love spending time at a roadside tea stall along with your friends? If yes, then you need to be very careful from here on. The city officials have caught hold of a person who has been supplying adulterated tea powders in the city. You could end with grave problems if you happen to consume this stuff.

Food safety officials have busted another case of food adulteration in Vizag.

The details of tea adulteration

A man by the name Vijay Singh, from Assam, is the one who’s been found guilty in this matter. Vijay Singh rented a house near Allipuram two years ago. He bought large amounts of low-quality tea powder from the local merchants and stocked them in his house. The culprit then adulterated the powder by mixing it with harmful chemicals. According to the food safety officials, this adulterated tea will appear as authentic as the original one. It will never produce doubts in the minds of its consumers.

In fact, Vijay Singh even collected used up tea powders from different road-side stalls. He used to sun-dry these powders and mix them with chemicals to once again resell them.

Vijay Singh even took care of the packaging material. He prepared many covers and branded them with fake labels of some companies. He then supplied these packaged powders to various places in the districts of Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam, and Vizianagaram. Many people who couldn’t identify the difference, ended up buying them. Moreover, the low prices also played a trick in luring the innocent customers.

Vijay went a step ahead and even printed false addresses on the labels of these powders to evade any potential problems.

Chemicals putting health at bay

The tea powders have been adulterated with harmful synthetic chemicals. These chemicals are generally used for dyeing textiles. Consuming these could bring you severe health problems. Unfortunately, the consumers might not only end up with different types of cancers but also get their kidneys and livers damaged.

The police seized large quantities of these materials in the house. They got hold of 110 sacks of low-quality tea powder and 8 sacks of synthetic chemicals.

This is another shocking incident of food adulteration that has come to light in the city. Recently, the officials seized expired food products from three godowns in Madhavadhara.