Haldiram’s potato-chips suppliers booked in cheating case

Haldiram's Foods has filed a complaint against its suppliers for allegedly not returning raw materials worth ₹34 lakh. The police have booked executives of the suppliers in a cheating case.

Mumbai: Acting on a complaint filed by Haldiram’s Foods, a multinational sweets, snacks and restaurant company, the Vile Parle police on Tuesday booked executives of the company’s suppliers in a cheating case for allegedly not returning raw materials worth ₹34 lakh.

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According to the complaint, which was registered by Sanjay Agrawal, general manager of the regional office of Haldiram’s; they had entered a supply agreement with Exclusive Webfoods, which was to cook the potato chips to be packaged under the former’s brand name in July 2020. In accordance with the same, the supplier was provided with 25,000 kilograms of oil along with other raw materials.

“However, when we started selling the chips made by them between April and October 2021, we started getting a lot of complaints from the consumers regarding the quality of the chips. The complaints included the chips being overcooked, having black marks and unevenly cut chips among others,” Agrawal told the police.

In December 2021, Exclusive Foodwebs was told to stop the production of the chips based on the substandard quality of the product, he added. The company was also told to return the remaining oil that was provided to them under the deal or an amount equivalent to its current market price, which came out to be around ₹33 lakh at that point.

An official from Vile Parle police said that the company first asked for some time to be able to collect and return the amount. “However, after a few months of communication, the executives from the other company stopped responding to the correspondence made by the complainant’s company,” he said.

The company had been in touch with the Vile Parle police since January this year over the matter. After exhausting all other options, they decided to go ahead with the police complaint this week.

“Based on the complaint, we have booked the erring company’s executives under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code. We have called for the relevant documents from both sides and are investigating the case,” said an officer from Vile Parle police.