A man sells clothes in Maangla haat in Bistupur. Picture by Srinivas

Jamshedpur, June 13: The next time you want to buy a branded shirt or a pair of trousers at throwaway prices, you can head for places other than showrooms.

Wait for a Tuesday and try the weekly Maangla haat at Bistupur and Sakchi.

Brands starting from Van Heusen to Strafford to Cheshire would all be there at Rs 40-50. But the catch is, although these shirts and trousers are properly washed, they are basically used items brought from places like America.

Such haats remain the favourite of a large population of the steel city, including both the rich and the financially weak, who throng them every Tuesday.

Other than garments, the haats also sell every other item one can think of, starting from electronic gadgets to kitchen items.

The garments have been discarded in foreign countries after a couple of washes. They are then shipped to India. Distributors present at the docks sell them to dress merchants who come to the docks. The clothes are then dispatched to various cities including New Delhi and Bangalore.

Sellers are ready to swear by the quality of the goods.

Badriu Zama alias Babban, who sits at the haat every Tuesday and has more than five outlets at the same place, said: “Although these garments are used, they are not used till the clothes are worn out. Foreigners wear it just for two to three days and then discard it. Then it is shipped here. There is no difference between what we sell here and what one gets in showrooms.”

Other dealers claimed that the clothes are a hit with members of the upper crust of society, too, who send their servants to buy the clothes in bulk.

While electronic gad- gets like radio and others can be purchased at very cheap rates depending on the capacity to bargain, other things like utensils, buckets, kitchenware, curtains and a host other items are also available.

A customer said: “On regular days, if one goes to the Bistupur market to buy plastic items like hangers or buckets, they demand a lot of money. But here the same thing is available at very low rates. Why not buy it from here instead of wasting so much of money?”