May 7: The public analyst has found nothing wrong in the Amul products seized from the city.

The seal of safety on the samples of bottled milk sold under the brand name of Amul Shakti by the public analyst has come as a major reprieve for the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, the makers of the Amul brand of products.

Sources in the district administration said the findings of the public analyst’s office have gone in favour of the company. They, however, declined to reveal the details of the report, saying it would be put up before the appropriate authority.

Notwithstanding the findings of the public analyst, the city police will proceed with their investigation as they believe they have a solid case in hand.

“The police probe into the case is on and once the investigation is over, the picture will become clear as to who the real culprits responsible for fudging the expiry dates are,” additional superintendent of police (city) Bibekananda Das said.

Three executives of the federation were arrested on April 11 on charges of fudging expiry dates on bottles of Amul Shakti.

The arrests came after a raid on April 10 on a godown, where labourers were found affixing labels with new expiry dates to bottles that had already run their lease of life.

Police later raided another godown of Amul’s stockist, Continental Transport Company Ltd, near India Carbon in a city suburb and seized over 10,000 cartons of Amul Shakti.

The public analyst, in its report submitted to the Kamrup (metropolitan) district administration and city police late last evening, stated it has found nothing wrong in the seven samples of the product collected by food inspectors from the confiscated consignment of Amul Shakti.

However, the city police said the investigation into the case registered against the company and its officials for “cheating consumers” by fudging the expiry dates on their milk product would not be affected by this report.

Police sources said the three arrested executives of the company, Mukul Goswami, Prateek Kumar and Moulik Joshi, have confessed during interrogation that they were fudging the expiry dates as directed by the company’s higher officials.

All of them were booked under Sections 420 and 273 of the Prohibition of Adulteration Act.

However, sources conceded that after the report certified the seized products as safe, it would become very difficult to initiate legal action on the “substandard” quality of these products.