The Hyderabad Police on Wednesday arrested 14 people, including the kingpin from Uttar Pradesh in connection with the racket of duplicate or spurious spices. Those arrested include Rajesh Gupta and two of his associates from Uttar Pradesh and 11 wholesalers from Begum Bazar, the business hub of Hyderabad.
The police investigations revealed that the gang was running a massive racket of manufacturing and supplying the duplicate spices. The police raided a shed in the
congested by lanes of Begum Bazar where the gang was mixing hazardous chemicals and other material with the spices and selling them at half the price of original.
Satyanrayana, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad said that the gang was running the racket for the last two years. “They were supplying the spurious spices like black pepper, poppy seeds and black Cummins not only to Hyderabad markets but as far as Delhi and Jharkhand”.
The modus operandi of the gang was to manipulate the other material using the chemicals in such a way that will appear to be original spices.
“Rajesh Gupta was well versed in the use of chemicals in this process,” he said.
The gang was using red oxide, black oxide, chemical paints, lubricants, gum and even the particles of brooms in this process.
To make Papaya seeds appear like pepper seeds, the gang used to put them in the fluid mix of red and black oxide and after taking them out polish them.
To what extent the gang was minting money was obvious from the fact that the duplicate pepper was being sold for `450 per kg against the market price of `1,000 for black pepper.