Delhi man held for manufacturing, selling spurious pesticides

New Delhi, July 29

The Delhi Police has arrested a 35-year-old man allegedly involved in illegal manufacturing, storing and selling of spurious pesticides, officials said on Thursday.

The accused—Atul Singhal, a resident of Rohini—was arrested by the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police based on a complaint filed by the authorized representative of UPL Limited – the manufacturer of agro-chemicals in India, including Quickphos.

The complainant alleged that the accused was manufacturing, stocking and selling counterfeit product fumigant-insecticide aluminium phosphide under the brand name ‘Quickphos’ in Delhi, police said They said aluminium phosphide is banned for sale in India since 2001.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing) R K Singh said “Singhal used to package and stock up counterfeit fumigant-insecticide aluminium phosphide under the brand name ‘QuickPhos’ – the brand name of the complainant company in violation of its copy rights and trade mark rights. He is involved in such illegal activities for last three years”.

He said a raid was conducted in Siraspur village on Libaspur Road here after completion of initial investigation.

“Atul Singhal was arrested and counterfeit and spurious materials in huge quantity were seized from the spot along with packaging material containers,” he added.

The officer said “hazardous low quality chemicals were being used in the process and all these illegal activities were being run in a thickly populated area in an unprofessional manner.

“He used the brand name ‘Quickphos’ on the packaged material illegally.” According to the police, counterfeit articles having falsified trademark of the complainant company including 355 Kg of metallic packaging tubes, 28.6 Kg of metallic lid covers, 15.2 Kg of plastic caps, 330 empty metallic containers and 35 filled metallic containers of spurious aluminium phosphide were recovered by them. — PTI