New Delhi: The operation was covert. Tankers containing Vanaspati ghee were intercepted by the Punjab police on a highway. They suspected beef tallow in the ghee.
Fifty raids were conducted on the factories of Vanaspati dealers across Punjab. The beef panic had reached Hindu kitchens. This was more than four decades ago.
This time, the culprit was a Jain business family, which sold Jain Shudh Vanaspati, an immensely popular brand of the 1970s and the 1980s. Politicians were up in arms. Then Union Minister of Commerce VP Singh was on the defensive.
Three members of the Jain family were absconding, and the Punjab superintendent of police flew out to apprehend them a foreign country. An already raucous monsoon session of Lok Sabha went into a tizzy when the startling revelation was made. In 1983, an Indian household staple had been contaminated with what was then primarily socially illicit—beef tallow.
There could be nothing more blasphemous. Jain Shudh Vanaspati Limited, one of the industry’s biggest players, was accused of selling pasty, treacly animal fat under the guise of ghee. And they were selling to the Mittal Group’s Bhatinda Chemical Limited.
The sale and use of tallow involved a web of companies and interests, and these were the two in the line of fire. ThePrint has reached out to both companies and this report will be updated once they respond. Outside the Jain Shudh Vanaspati Limited office in Delhi, protests were staged by religious organisations.
At a press .