The raid at the Ramganj factory. (Nantu Dey)

Siliguri/Islampur, Aug. 7: Officials of the Tea Board of India raided two factories of a company at Coonoor in Tamil Nadu and Islampur in Bengal and seized around 30,000 kg of adulterated CTC tea, most of it about to be shipped to Afghanistan.

The officials said they had been tipped off about wrongdoing at the factories of Beeyu Overseas Limited (BOL), a public limited company with registered office at Fulahar in North Dinajpur. The raids yielded adulterated brew made with tealeaves, tea waste, chemicals, lime and sugar.

“We raided the BOL factory at Dodabetta near Coonoor yesterday. Around 26,000kg of adulterated tea was loaded in containers about to be sent to Tuticorin port for export to Afghanistan,” said R.D. Nazeem, a deputy director of the tea board posted at Coonoor. “We also found 10,000-15,000kg of tea waste and a dark-coloured chemical.”

“The tea waste had been soaked in lime water and mixed with sugar and the chemical,” Nazeem said. “Equal quantities of tealeaves and this material had been mixed to get the final product.”

Industry sources said BOL has 10 factories in north Bengal and south India and a paid-up capital of around Rs 15 crore with clients in Russia, Afghanistan and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

After the raid, tea board officials stopped tea placed by BOL at Coonoor auction centre. They also tipped officials in north Bengal, which led to a raid in a BOL factory at Ramganj in Islampur subdivision of North Dinajpur today.

“We found 168 bags of adulterated tea, each weighing 20kg at the factory,” said Amal Roychoudhury, a deputy director of the tea board posted in Siliguri. “We suspect that tea waste produced during processing, which should ideally be incinerated, has been mixed with normal CTC.”

The two factories in Dodabetta and Ramganj have been sealed and samples of the seized tea will soon be sent to laboratories for tests. Tea board officials refused to comment on the potential hazard of drinking the spurious tea until the lab reports come.

B.P. Singh, the chairman-cum-managing director of BOL was in Ooty and did not speak to the media. A company executive told The Telegraph over the phone from Ooty: “We suspect foul play by some competitors. The allegation of recovering adulterated tea is baseless. The tea waste and other material that the board claims to have seized were in the factory for some other purposes.”