The whole country is alarmed by the increasing milk adulteration incidents. Till now milk adulteration was categorized as a crime that meant payment of a fine, or serving six months in jail as punishment. Now, Supreme Court has decided to become stringent and has stated that this action of defilement will be punishable with a life time sentence.
A report handed over by Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) in 2011, has confirmed that 68% milk in the market is adulterated. West Bengal and UP had amended their laws and have already declared that adulteration needs a life imprisonment sentence as punishment.
Milk adulteration has touched the 100% mark in places like Odisha, Bihar, Mizoram, Daman and Diu, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Jharkhand. Synthetic milk poses a threat to life and the previous law needed serious amendment. Now, people messing or adulterating the milk by adding harmful chemicals will not get off easy. Law will not go light on these adulterators; they will have to spend their whole life behind bars.
Talking about the growing concern of adulteration, and a need to curb this heinous act of selling adulterated milk to innocent people, a bench consisting of Chief Justice T. Thakur, and Justices R. Banumathi and U. U. Lalit , stated that there was an immediate need to control this sale. They stated that milk adulteration was very harmful for the health of future generations as it was consumed by infants and children, as a staple diet.
Highlighting the fact that Odisha, West Bengal and Uttar Pardesh had amended the lenient law and introduced life imprisonment as punishment, the Panel stated that the present law was relaxed and needed to be modified and now “adulteration needs to be punishable up to life imprisonment” .
The panel stated , “It will be in order, if the Centre considers making suitable amendments in the penal provisions at par with the provisions contained in the state amendments to the IPC. It is also desirable that the Centre revisits the Food Safety and Standards Act to revise the punishment for adulteration making it more deterrent in cases where the adulterant can have an adverse impact on health.”Milk checking vans in the high-risk areas will also be introduced to curb selling of spurious milk.
Adulterated milk is very harmful and people need to be able to recognize that adulterants that are being added to food products. The Courts have asked the Government to hold workshops to help people get familiar with these spurious products that harm the purity of the food and drink, they consume. The Court has also ordered the State Governments and Centre
to check unethical food practices and corruption in relation to food authorities.
