Cuttack: Police are still clueless about the source of the fake labels of popular brands of ghee that were seized in large numbers when a spurious ghee manufacturing unit was busted here four days ago.

The police, however, claimed it would zero in on the source as they had already identified two dubious ghee manufacturers and one plastic-manufacturing unit in Bhubaneswar.

The fake labels were being used for pushing subs-standard ghee under labels of popular brands of ghee - such as Omfed, Durga and Devi - into the city markets.

A huge quantity of containers of various sizes (such as those in which Omfed ghee is made available in the market) was seized during raids on a fake ghee-manufacturing unit at the residence of Subash Behera at Professorpada in Patia area of the capital.

During investigation, the police found out that the plastic-manufacturing unit also used to supply containers to Omfed.

"We are, however, yet to trace the source of the large number of fake labels of Omfed ghee that were seized during the raid. Investigation is on," Swain said.

Investigation has so far revealed that Omfed got its labels from a factory in Calcutta. "We are trying to find out who had helped him to get the Omfed labels in such bulk numbers. However, we suspect it could be the handiwork of either someone in the Calcutta factory or someone in Omfed," Swain said.

Behera was running the fake ghee-manufacturing unit form the first floor of his house at Professorpada. The fake ghee was being sold in the name of popular brands in the markets of Cuttack and other places. "Materials seized during the raid indicated that Behera had manufactured the spurious ghee by using palmolein oil and other chemicals. The odour of the seized ghee also hinted at the use of other petroleum products. We will send samples of the seized substances to the forensic science laboratory to ascertain the compositions that have been used," Swain said.

He said efforts were on trace the source of palmolein oil used for preparation of the spurious ghee.

The police had seized around 60 containers of 200ml size, 12 containers of 1000ml size of Omfed ghee and sachets of Durga ghee and Devi ghee apart from several empty containers, wrappers, labels and packaging machinery.

Mangalabag police arrested Behera and registered a case against him for cheating and violation of the provisions of the Trade and Merchandise Act and the Trademarks Act.