The Malad police, which is carrying out an investigation in the case wherein a doctor found a piece of flesh with nail in a cone ice cream, is now tracking the entire supply chain of the ice cream. “We are tracking every level of the entire chain right from the delivery executive of Zepto to the third party manufacturer. This will mainly include the third party manufacturer’s ice cream making facility,” Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone 11, Anand Bhoite said.
Police said that the parent company of Yummo ice cream, Walko Food Co Ltd, gets their ice creams manufactured from five different third party manufacturers. Companies based in Faridabad in Uttar Pradesh and Indapur in Pune are among these five manufacturers.
“We are trying to track from which manufacturer the ice cream was supplied to the Malad based storage godown. Ice cream is supplied to this godown from Bhiwandi. We are tracking with the help of the batch number printed in the ice-cream wrap and in coordination with the ice cream company,” DCP Bhoite said.
In the preliminary probe, police found that the ice cream manufacturers of this brand have automated machines, and are not sure from where exactly the piece of flesh dropped on the ice cream, the senior police officer said.
On Wednesday, 26-year-old Brandon Ferrao, a doctor, filed a complaint with Malad police station after he found a piece of flesh with nail in the Yummo’s butterscotch ice cream.
“When I carefully examined, I found that it was a flesh with a broken nail attached to it,” said Ferrao, whose sister had ordered the ice cream online from Zepto.
On his complaint, the Malad police registered a case against the unidentified employee of Yummo under sections 272 (adulteration of food article), 273 (selling food or drink that has become noxious), and 336 (rash and dangerous act endangering human life) of the IPC.
Police have sent the flesh to the forensic lab to ascertain if the flesh is of a human or any animal.
Yummo Ice Cream company in a statement said, “Product quality and safety being our highest priority we were in process to address the situation. Meanwhile the matter escalated, and an official police complaint was filed by the customer… We are taking this incident very seriously. We have stopped manufacturing at this third-party manufacturing facility…. We are a law-abiding company and shall fully co-operate and support the authorities to investigate the matter thoroughly.”