Private Papers Won’t Quash a Prosecution: Delhi HC lets ‘Amul Ghee’ adulteration case proceed; Section 77 time-extension defeats limitation

“These are private documents… required to be proved during the evidence.”, Delhi High Court (Justice Neena Bansal Krishna) refused to quash criminal proceedings under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 (FSS Act) stemming from a sample of “Amul” ghee allegedly found adulterated, unsafe, and misbranded. Deciding CRL.M.C. 1426/2021 and W.P.(CRL) 1515/2022, the Court held that the defence of “counterfeiting” and reliance on internal invoices and batch records raise issues for trial—not for quashing at the summoning stage—and that a reasoned extension under Section 77 validly saved the prosecution from limitation (Outcome: petitions dismissed; summoning order sustained).

The prosecution traces back to March 7, 2019, when Food Safety officials purchased four 1-litre packs of ghee from Bhagwati Store, Dwarka, promptly sealing and dispatching the sample to the Food Analyst the next day “in accordance with the Rules.” The Food Analyst’s report dated March 20, 2019 recorded: “The sample is unsafe because it has added vegetable oil in place of ghee… [and] is also substandard… [BR reading] exceeds the prescribed maximum limit… [and] Reichert value is less than the prescribed minimum limit… [It is] an admixture of ghee and vegetable oil, which is prohibited & Restricted for sale…” On appeal, the Central Food Laboratory, Kolkata, declared on July 2, 2019: “The parameters tested and found non-conforming revealing it as a spurious non-dairy product… [It] contravenes… for misleading label declaration. Hence, the sample is sub-standard, unsafe and misbranded.”

The complaint mapped a supply chain running from CP Wholesale India Pvt. Ltd. to Virgo Agencies and then to Bhagwati Store; contemporaneous correspondence stated the wholesale stock had been procured from GCMMFL “only.” The petitioners (GCMMFL, its nominee, Banas Dairy and its nominee, and CP Wholesale) asserted the seized packs were counterfeit and leaned on private records—batch distributions, invoices, and internal test reports—to break the chain.

The first issue was classic Section 482 CrPC terrain: could the Court, at the summons stage, weigh the petitioners’ private documents to conclude that the seized packs were counterfeit and not linked to them? The answer was a crisp “no.” As the Court put it, “At this stage of summoning the documents which are relied upon by the Petitioner, cannot be considered… These are private documents which are required to be proved during the evidence.” The counterfeit narrative—resting on internal invoices and “counter-checks” of batch genuineness—was likewise pegged as a matter for trial: “these are the documents and the facts which need to be established by the Petitioners in the Evidence.”

The second issue was limitation under Section 77 FSS Act. The petitioners argued the complaint, filed after one year from March 7, 2019, was time-barred. The Court reproduced Section 77’s text—“no court shall take cognizance… after… one year… Provided that the Commissioner of Food Safety may… approve prosecution within an extended period of up to three years”—and noted the Commissioner’s sanction dated August 31, 2020 expressly cited non-responses and the COVID-19 lockdown before granting extra time; the complaint then reached court on September 3, 2020. Hence, “it cannot be said that the Complaint is barred by limitation.”

Justice Neena Bansal Krishna recorded that the complaint alleged violations of Section 26(1), Section 26(2)(ii) read with Section 3(1)(zx) FSS Act and allied Regulations, for which the ACMM had taken cognizance and summoned nine accused by order dated January 18, 2021. The petitions by GCMMFL and others (CRL.M.C. 1426/2021) and by CP Wholesale (W.P.(CRL) 1515/2022) sought to upset that summoning order; both failed. In conclusion: “there is no ground for quashing of the Complaint or setting aside the Summoning Order dated 18.01.2021… The Petitions are accordingly dismissed.”

Notably, the Court also recounted the laboratory verdicts—“spurious non-dairy product… sub-standard, unsafe and misbranded”—as the factual matrix that must be tested at trial, not pre-empted on a paper-record at the threshold.

The ruling tightens the gate at the Section 482 threshold for FSS Act prosecutions: contested supply-chain narratives and private records do not short-circuit a summons. And when the Commissioner records reasons and grants a Section 77 extension, a later-filed complaint survives the limitation attack. The criminal process proceeds.

Date of Decision: August 11, 2025