15 quintals of spurious paneer seized in Una

In a pre-Diwali crackdown, the CID wing of the Una police today raided two food processing units and seized 15 quintals of reportedly spurious cottage cheese (paneer), besides a large quantity of sweets. The premises belong to a local businessman, having a sweets shop on Una-Chandigarh highway.

Acting on a tip-off, police teams raided a commercial establishment in Ward 4 in Una and another in Kuthar Khurd village on the outskirts of the city. Consignments of cottage cheese, received from a dairy processing unit in Panchkula, were seized. During investigations, it was revealed that the consignment was against a bill, where the cost of 1 kg of cheese was mentioned at Rs 195. Dairy cheese is sold at Rs 380 per kg in open market, said an official. The authorities also seized large quantities of sweets, also purchased from Panchkula unit.

The samples of cheese and sweets were sealed in the presence of Assistant Commissioner of the Food Safety Department, Jagdish Dhiman. The district Food Safety and the State Taxes and Excise Departments were sounded by the police. Since sweets attract GST, the State Taxes and Excise Department officials fined the businessman Rs 13,000 for evading the payment of GST to the government.