Atim Singh, a resident of Noida, ordered a popular brand of protein supplement from an online firm. But to his horror, when he consumed them, he became very ill — he suffered stomach and liver problems as well as facial breakouts, police said.
Suspicious about the product, Singh lodged a complaint with the Noida police on December 9. The police then registered an FIR under BNS Section 318 (4) Fraud and relevant sections of the IT Act.
During the investigation, police traced the product to a factory in Greater Noida’s Sector 86 and a team with officials from the Food Safety and Drug Administration department raided the premises on Tuesday.
Inside, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Greater Noida) Shakti Mohan Awasthi said, officers found three men filling empty boxes in the basement. A large number of boxes filled with fake protein powder called “The Athlete’s Complete Nutrition” were found in the basement. When we asked if they had a license, the men had no answer. We then alerted the food safety team, after which they were arrested,” the DCP said.
Protein supplements are mainly used by athletes, bodybuilders, and even youngsters who go to the gym to increase their fitness level.
The DCP said that “protein box, capsule box, wrapper, powder sack, packing machine, printing machine and seal worth Rs 50 lakh” were also recovered from the spot.
According to the police, Sahil Yadav (27), Harsh Agarwal (28) and Amit Chaubey (30) of Ghaziabad were running a fake food supplement factory. All three operated through an online platform and sold their fake supplements at four to five times the market rate.
“Singh had ordered these (fake) gym supplements and after consuming them, his health deteriorated and he developed stomach and liver problems with sudden breakouts on his face,” the DCP said.
During the interrogation, Sahil revealed that he worked for Haryana’s food supplement manufacturing company Advance Nutratech in 2017-2018, the police said. “After learning the basics of the job, he set up his own firm on December 1 and made Harsh and Amit his partners. The three buy raw materials to make fake food cheaply from different places,” said Awasthi.
“We are still investigating the case to find out if he is part of this racket,” he added.