The fake paint manufacturing unit raided at Jagatpur. Pictures by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Sept. 27: Jagatpur police today raided a godown of a cement and paint manufacturing factory and detained two persons on charges of allegedly selling fake paint.

Around 300 bags of cement paint (Berger) and nearly five tonnes of Pidilite distemper worth over Rs 1 crore was recovered during the raid on Ashoka Paints and Chemicals factory at Jagatpur Industrial Estate.

Police sources said the staff of the company used to sell local paint in the name of various branded companies by duplicating their products.

The company is suspected to be carrying out this illegal trade for the past four years.

The breakthrough came after officials of Pidilite company suspected that their product was being duplicated by some traders and asked a Calcutta-based detective agency to investigate.

“We have an annual sale of 1,400 tonnes of paint in Odisha, which is the highest in the country. But there were some problems pertaining to our sales and we started receiving complaints about our product,” project manager Sameer Ranjan Das.

Besides Berger and Pidilite, paints of other brands, including Asian Paints, Shalimar, were also being duplicated at the factory.

Officials of Enforcers of Intellectual Property Rights and the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police had busted an illegal unit manufacturing fake lubricant of reputed brands and selling in the market earlier this year from the same area.

Over 1,000 litres of fake oil packed in branded products of various lubricant companies, including Castrol, Hero Honda, Elf, and Moto 4, had been seized during the raid on May 25.

Stickers, holograms and empty packets of engine oil were also recovered during the raid on Mohapatra’s shop Mahabir Automobiles near Samrat Talkies area. The cost of the seized items was over Rs 5 lakh.

Two persons — Sambit Mishra, 30 and Pradip Mohapatra, 55 — were also arrested in connection with the incident under section 420 of the Copyrights Act, 1957.