Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has raided an illegal operation in Navi Mumbai that faked expiry dates and nutritional information on food
products made by PepsiCo, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Unilever so they could be exported abroad, Reuters reported, citing exclusive access to the site. The raid was carried out under FDA Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe, who has led an intensified statewide food safety drive since taking charge in May. Food safety officers carried out a six-day investigation at the warehouse, run by Sadhana Enterprises about 25 km from Mumbai’s international airport, seizing goods worth close to $80,000, Reuters found. Original expiry and manufacturing dates had been scratched off products including PepsiCo’s Lay’s and Kurkure, Nestle’s Maggi noodles, Unilever’s Knorr soup and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and Coca-Cola’s Thums Up and Limca, with machines on site to print and paste on fresh labels. The warehouse owner reportedly said the operation was being run on behalf of 19 lesser-known exporters, and most products involved were expired or close to it. A police case document cited by Reuters said the relabelling meant harmful products were being exported for sale, defrauding customers in the process. It was also found some packs being prepared with a manufacturing date of October 2, 2026 — weeks ahead of time — and fake nutrition labels, including one marked “Product of India” and bilingual English-French labelling, pasted over Maggi and Kurkure packaging to make it export-ready. In one case, the declared cereal content was cut by 10%, with calorie and serving-size figures altered to match. Mundhe told Reuters he was shocked by the scale of what looked like an organised, systematic racket. Reuters said PepsiCo, Nestle, Hindustan Unilever and Coca-Cola did not respond to requests for comment, and that it remained unclear whether arrests had been made or where the mislabelled goods were headed. The case is the latest in a run of high-profile actions since Mundhe took charge of the FDA on May 25 — a run that has separately pulled quick-commerce platforms into the regulator’s sights. In an exclusive interaction with Times Now, Mundhe addressed that second front directly, speaking to the gap Times Now Digital’s ongoing campaign, ‘E-Comms Hiding Health Info’, has been pressing on for weeks: the routine absence of manufacturing and expiry dates on food sold through platforms such as Zepto, Amazon Now, Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, BigBasket and Flipkart Minutes — companies that have largely sidestepped the newsroom’s repeated questions on the issue. Mundhe told Times Now Digital that safety on these platforms has to be judged against compliance, not blanket assumptions about a sector, stressing that products sold through quick-commerce must meet required standards and be sourced from properly registered or licensed entities. On the missing dates specifically, he asked consumers to act as the FDA’s eyes and ears: if a product carries no manufacturing or expiry date, report it on the FDA’s portal, and don’t buy it. He told Times Now Digital the FDA has carried out more than 3,100 inspections since he took over, resulting in 165 licence suspensions and over 700 improvement notices — and that even a single instance of unsafe or adulterated food was serious enough to warrant scrutiny. The Commissioner’s comments land squarely on the question Times Now Digital’s campaign has been putting to e-commerce platforms for weeks, largely without answers: why manufacturing and expiry dates, mandatory on a physical shelf, disappear the moment a product moves online. With India’s food regulator now on record saying the gap needs to be reported and acted on, the onus shifts more visibly onto platforms that have so far preferred silence to disclosure.
