E-Paper
Fake mineral water being sold at stations
BE CAREFUL while purchasing mineral water bottles at the Cantonment railway stations in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Varanasi railway station is one such station where generally rag pickers offer simple tap water in a used bottle at a subsidised cost to the passengers in running trains.
BE CAREFUL while purchasing mineral water bottles at the Cantonment railway stations in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Varanasi railway station is one such station where generally rag pickers offer simple tap water in a used bottle at a subsidised cost to the passengers in running trains.
This is a routine feature on the platforms of Cantonment railway station and in running trains.
With the onset of summer, this business is flourishing with zero investment. The people normally ignore checking the seal on the mineral water bottles and this lapse on the part of the passengers makes this business thrive.
The rate of such duplicate mineral water bottles revolves around Rs 5.
A commuter said that it was difficult to identify whether the mineral water bottle was original or fake.
He added that these vendors/small children/rag pickers sold such water bottles when the train was about to leave the station.
This is the reason why some people are seen crushing the bottles after using them.
“ Every user should follow this practice”, commuter Rakesh Trivedi said.
Teams of Railway Police Force conduct raids from time to time to check sale of fake mineral water bottles, but the business continues to thrive.
Under such raids, a police team of RPF, led by Superintendent Incharge Dharm Raj, nabbed 13 people including sellers of fake mineral water.
“This business was going on when power to take action against the culprits was taken way from us”, an official of the Government Railway Police (GRP) said, adding, “During Nitish Kumar’s tenure as Railway Minister, the GRP was divested of the power to take action against the children involved in the sale of duplicate water bottles”, he added.
However, no RPF official was available for comment.
Meanwhile, two boys Pintoo(14) and Manoj(10) were caught selling such water bottles by a social organisation ‘Childline’ recently and were sent to the Child Protection Home located in Ramnagar for rehabilitation, informed Aprajita Singh, an offical of Childline.
