Junagadh’s Crime Branch and the district food department have arrested Iqbal Chauhan, a resident of Dungarpur village, on charges of making imitation milk at his home and selling it to private dairies. Investigators say he blended palmolein oil, milk powder and water into a thick white liquid, mixed it with real milk, and sent roughly 800 litres a day to two collection points in Nagalpur and Nandarkhi, DeshGujarat reported on Wednesday.
Police seized adulterated milk, tins of palmolein and packets of milk powder, material worth about Rs 86,000, and sent samples to the Forensic Science Laboratory. Both DeshGujarat and Trishul News report that the operation had run for four to five months. The case is registered at Junagadh taluka police station, and the laboratory results will decide what action, if any, follows against the dairies that bought the milk.
A second case in a month
Dungarpur is not the district’s first such raid this season. In mid-August, police in Khadia village, also in Junagadh taluka, arrested a man accused of making chemical-laced milk in a house with palmolein and powders, and destroyed 60 litres on the spot, Gujarat First reported at the time. Gujarat First’s report on the Dungarpur arrest also links the two cases and says investigators traced the raw material to a trader in Mendarda.
The pattern across Gujarat this month points the same way. On September 15, Surat authorities raided a counterfeit edible oil unit and seized stock worth Rs 20.30 lakh. Ahmedabad’s civic body has begun placing rapid adulteration test kits in sweet and farsan shops. The state government has also brought a bill to license cattle feed makers and punish feed adulteration.
Why village collection points are the weak link
Saurashtra’s milk economy runs on small collection. Farmers and small traders pour milk into local private dairies, which pool it and send it on to chilling centres and larger processors. According to DeshGujarat’s account, the two private operators in this case moved between 1,200 and 2,000 litres a day onward, including supplies to Sorath Dairy. At those volumes, 800 litres of doctored milk from one supplier made up a large share of what they sold.
Fat and SNF (solids-not-fat) readings decide what a collection point pays for milk. Palmolein raises the fat reading and milk powder lifts the solids, so a blend of the two with water can pass a basic fat-and-SNF check while costing far less than milk from cattle. Catching vegetable fat needs a laboratory test that many small collection points do not run on every can.
What it means for households in Junagadh
- Health: palmolein-based milk lacks the protein and nutrients of real milk. Children and elderly people who rely on milk for nutrition lose the most. The August case involved detergent-type powders too, which carry a direct health risk.
- Loose milk: the Dungarpur supply went to private dairies, which also sell loose milk locally. Packaged milk from large cooperatives runs through more testing, though no supply chain is immune once adulterated milk enters it upstream.
- Checking at home: FSSAI publishes simple home tests for common milk adulterants, and residents can report suspect milk to the district food safety office.
What to watch
The FSL report is the next step. It will show whether the samples contained only oil and powder or harmful chemicals as well, and that finding will shape the charges. Police have said they are checking whether more people and more buyers were involved. The larger question for the district food department is testing at collection points: two home-based operations in a month suggest the current checks let such milk through for months before a raid.
Sources: DeshGujarat, Trishul News, Gujarat First, Gujarat First (Khadia case), DeshGujarat (Surat oil case)
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.