The Malad Police, which is probing the case over a piece of flesh found in ice cream, managed to trace the worker at the Pune factory who had met with an accident during work and had lost part of his finger.
To ascertain that it was a piece of flesh from his finger which was found in the ice cream, the police have sent his DNA sample to the Forensic Science Lab (FSL) for matching the DNA collected from the flesh found on the ice cream scoop.
The worker has been identified as Omkar Pote (24), who hails from Satara and is employed in the factory of Fortune Dairy Industries Pvt Ltd at Indapur in Pune.
DCP Anand Bhoite confirmed that the worker admitted that on May 11 he got his finger cut while he was working at the scotch crushing machine.
Pote has, however, told police that the injury was not major. “For the final confirmation we are awaiting a report from the FSL to establish that it was his finger’s flesh that was found on the ice cream scoop,” Bhoite said.
According to police, while tracking the supply chain of the ice cream company using the batch of the ice cream, the police team had found that the Malad based distributor had received the ice cream from Bhiwandi.
The Bhiwandi godown has received it from a storage godown down in Sakinaka and in Sakinaka the ice cream had come from the Hadapsar, Pune. The Hadapsar godown has received the ice cream from the third party manufacturer’s factory in Indapur.
While making inquiry of workers at the Indapur factory, the police team discovered that Pote had met with an accident in the factory on May 11.
Pote got it treated from a private doctor and did not inform his superiors, police said.
If confirmed that it was flesh of Pote’s finger in the ice cream, action will be taken against him and his supervisor for negligence, a police officer said.
On June 12, 26-year-old Brandon Ferrao, a Malad-based doctor, while having the Yummo’s butterscotch ice cream in the afternoon, discovered a piece of a nail in it. “Initially I thought it’s a nut but when I carefully examined it, I found that it was flesh with a broken nail attached to it,” said Ferrao.
Ferrao’s sister had ordered the ice cream online from Zepto. Ferrao filed a complaint with Mumbai’s Malad police station.
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 Indian Penal Code.
Earlier Yummo Ice Cream company, in their statement, had stated, “We are taking this incident very seriously. We have stopped manufacturing at this third-party manufacturing facility. We have isolated the said product at the facility, our warehouses and in process to do the same at the market level. We are a law-abiding company and shall fully co-operate and support the authorities to investigate the matter thoroughly.”
