Fake Cotton Seeds Manufacturing Unit Busted in Adilabad

 Adilabad: The state government’s crackdown on spurious cotton seeds and their sales resulted in unearthing a manufacturing unit and seizing spurious cotton seeds at various places in the last three days in the erstwhile Adilabad district.

The agriculture and police staff busted a fake cotton seeds manufacturing unit locally and found that these cotton seeds were sold with branded names in Adilabad town and police and seized 30 kg of spurious cotton seeds from one Erravothu Raju at Kothapalli village in Tandur mandal on May 24.

Raju admitted that he purchased the fake cotton seeds from one Tirumalashetti Ramakrishna of Punnur village of Prakasham district of Andhra Pradesh. Ramakrishna was living at Rollapadu village in Rebbena mandal of Komaram Bheem Asifabad district.

The officials seized 70 kg of loose cotton seeds while they were being shifted to Maharashtra via Gudem village of Chinthalamanepalli mandal of Komaram Bheem Asifabad district on May 22.

Police arrested Chapile Vinod of Gangapur village of Chinthalamanepalli and three others Chapile Purushotham, Bollaboyena Ashok, and Bolleboina Krishna were absconding.

The agriculture department also suspected that some miscreants are using the seeds collected from the local ginning factories in manufacturing cotton seeds, packing them under different names of brands and selling them to gullible farmers.

It is also suspected that some people collect seeds from the local ginning factories, giving them chemical coating, packing them in sachets and selling them.

In a joint operation by the Agriculture and Police unearthed a spurious cotton seed manufacturing unit in Ramnagar colony in Adilabad town on Saturday and seized 400 kg spurious seeds and 935 seed packets valued of Rs 19 lakh and arrested Sama Ashok Reddy and A. Rajender and Kaparthi Manikanta was absconding.

It was found that 17,000 cotton seed packets were sold in the markets mainly in Adilabad and Komaram Bheem Asifabad districts.

Agriculture officials are checking the fertilizer and pesticide shops to seize the fake cotton seeds of the Meenakshi company.

District Agriculture officer D. Pullaiah said a group of people running ‘Meenakshi Seed Company’ and also marketing seeds of ‘Safal’ company but they are manufacturing their own seed packets and selling them locally by using loose seeds collected from Karnataka and giving them brand name of Pandurang, Pudami J16, Meenakshi Gold and White Gold.

He said Meenakshi seed company owner Sama Ahok Reddy has no permission and license to manufacture new brands and they have to market the Safal brand seeds locally. He said they sent the seized cotton seed samples for Lab tests in Hyderabad.

Pullaiah said there is no assurance of the yield if any farmer sown these brands of seeds being sold by the Meenakshi Seed company and seeds may or may not germinate.