The gates of three dairy unit’s in Nuh’s Punhana were locked on Friday, and there was nobody in sight. The word among locals was that two of the operators had fled the village.
All three units, which supplied paneer and other dairy products to Delhi-NCR, have been sealed and abandoned after they became the site of a massive crackdown, in which 7600 kg of spurious dairy products were seized from them.
Hours after he took charge as the Food Safety Officer (FSO) of Nuh on September 10, Dr Vikas Jaglan led a joint raid by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) and the district administration at 8 pm, resulting in this massive seizure from these three dairies.
He ordered the entire consignment buried in deep trenches just outside the dairy gates, to ensure it could not re-enter the food supply chain.
The seizure accounted for nearly all of the roughly 8,000 kg of adulterated dairy products seized across the district over the past three weeks, according to officials..
“From the first dairy, we seized 4,000 kg, then 3,000 kg and 600 kg from the other two adjoining ones. In the largest one, the staff ran away, leaving the boiler on,” said Jaglan.
The heightened enforcement in Nuh follows a statewide ban on the manufacture, storage, distribution and sale of analogue or non-dairy paneer sold as genuine dairy paneer.
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The ban, notified by the Haryana Food and Drugs Administration on August 17, was published in the Haryana Government Gazette on August 21 and will remain in force for one year.
What else did the raid uncover?
During the raids, food safety officials also found hazardous industrial-grade chemicals, including fluorescent dyes and “rang kaat” or sodium thiosulphate.
This is an industrial bleaching agent routinely used to strip and whiten clothes in the textile industry, Dr Jaglan, who is on deputation from Panchkula where he was in the veterinary department, told The Indian Express.
“The practice is so traditional here, people are not even aware of its harmful nature. Rang kaat is industrial grade and only meant for clothes and to give it a shine, but these chemicals are being ingested by consumers,” he said.
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The makeshift factories operated out of rented premises, situated barely a stone’s throw from an established Dairy Best manufacturing facility.
According to local resident Mohd Haneef, all three premises had been rented out. One was operated by a local resident of Punhana, while the other two were run by individuals from outside the district.
Two of the operators fled the village two days after the raid, locals claimed.
From Nuh to the NCR
The synthetic dairy produced in these units was primarily intended to cater to urban demand across the National Capital Region, FDA and police sources said.
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Consignments were loaded from the rural outskirts of Punhana and ferried into neighbouring Faridabad before being distributed to retail markets and eateries across Delhi and the wider NCR, sources said.
Jaglan said the three sealed units represented only a fraction of the illicit dairy units operating in the belt.
“There are about 20-40 registered dairies in the district. We have knowledge of at least 70-80 illicit dairies overall whose hygiene and food handling standards will fail norms,” he said.
He said the crackdown was not limited to analogue paneer, with adulteration also found in other dairy products. “Apart from paneer, a lot of these dangerous chemicals were being used to make cheap rasgullas etc,” he said.
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The scale of the problem in Nuh comes against the backdrop of wider concerns over dairy adulteration in Haryana.
According to the gazette order, of 285 paneer and dairy analogue samples collected across the state between April 2025 and March 2026, 200 failed laboratory analysis. Of these, 171 were found to be sub-standard and 29 were categorised as unsafe, with the products showing substitution of natural milk fat with vegetable oils and non-dairy fats.
The two adjoining dairy units.
Coordinated crackdown
Following the latest findings, the anti-adulteration drive was restructured as an inter-departmental effort. The district administration has assumed the role of coordinator, bringing together the FDA, local civil authorities and Haryana Police for operations.
Field-level enforcement in the district had previously been constrained by vacancies and officers holding additional charges. For instance, Jaglan’s predecessor had Nuh as an additional charge apart from being the FSO of Gurugram and Rewari.
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To get full-time personnel to such posts, the Haryana government had to approve new pay scales for those sent on deputation from other departments, a process that took the better part of two years, officials said.
The enforcement drive is also taking place against a backlog of cases. Jaglan is currently handling 22 court cases related to past food adulteration prosecutions in the district.
The two adjoining dairy units.