Murari Bagla in custody after a raid on a shop in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Sachin

Patna, Sept. 13: The economic offences wing of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) today raided at least two places in Patna City, known to be the hub of fake goods and recovered counterfeit soaps and hair oil among various other fast moving consumer goods worth lakhs of rupees.

Around 11am, the CID team raided the factory of one Murari Bagla in Terighat area under Khajekala police station and recovered fake soaps and hair oil of popular brands worth at least Rs 25 lakh.

“It is a clever business as they tend to just change the spellings of the brands. The popular Nihar hair oil has become ‘Nikhar’ and they have labels for the same too. The Lifebuoy soap has got a fake make by the name of ‘Lijabath’. There are many such fake makes, which have been recovered. The total worth of these products is around Rs 25 lakh. Moreover, five machines meant for packing have also been recovered from the place. The cost of the machines must be around Rs 25 lakh too,” a source said. The team also recovered a lot of wrappers for these products.

The team also raided NK Chemical Works factory in Mansurganj area under Malsalami police station.

“There are several irregularities in this particular factory and things are being investigated at this moment,” an officer said. Earlier too, there have been several raids in the state capital with the police recovering several fake products ranging from health drinks, sports goods, cosmetics, spare parts of automobiles and machines, washing detergents, food stuff among other items.

“It is a huge market in Patna City. Apart from these raids, the police have recovered so many other counterfeit things like fake cosmetics and automobile parts,” another police officer said.