New Delhi: After Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali soan papdi failed quality tests, a court in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh imposed fines and a jail term of six months on three people, including an assistant manager of Patanjali Ayurved Limited, as per a report by LiveHindustan.
Businessman Leeladhar Pathak, distributor Ajay Joshi and Patanjali assistant manager Abhishek Kumar have cases filed against them in this regard. The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand, has also sentenced them to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 25,000 respectively under Section 59 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
On October 17, 2019, a food safety inspector had collected samples of Patanjali Navratna Cardamom Soan Papdi from a shop in the main market of Berinag, Pithoragarh, following complaints about its quality. The samples were subjected to a forensic investigation at the State Food and Drug Testing Laboratory in Rudrapur, Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand. In December 2020, the laboratory’s report sent to the State Food Safety Department indicated that the sweets were of poor quality and did not pass quality tests.
LiveHindustan quoted a food safety official as saying that the evidence presented in the court clearly pointed out the poor quality of the product.
This comes barely two months after the Supreme Court had pulled up Patanjali’s founders Baba Ramdev and Acharaya Balkrishna over the company’s misleading advertisements regarding its products in the media.
