The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested five people including two owners for allegedly supplying and marketing expired cosmetics products.
The arrestees are Shankar Mandal (34), Bireshwar Mandal (36), Md Harunur Rashid (45), Md Sabuj Ahmed (30), and Md Moniruzzaman (23).
They were arrested from Vatara's Sayednagar area in Dhaka on Tuesday. They are now in a three-day remand for interrogation.
CID’s Additional Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Sheikh Md Rezaul Haider confirmed the matter at a press briefing in the CID headquarters on Thursday.
He said acting on a tip-off, a team of CID conducted a raid in the Vatara area and arrested them. They recovered a huge amount of fake cosmetics worth around Tk10 crore and a machine that was used for altering expiration tags.
The official said the company, SPS Corporation, was marketing expired cosmetics made by reputed foreign companies like Wipro Enterprise and Hankel. They have been in the business for around 10 years.
Rezaul said a large portion of the products remain unsold in various stores even after expiration. According to the rules of BSTI and the prevailing laws of Bangladesh, all these products are to be destroyed.
However, the accused used to remove the expiration seals and put new expiry dates on the products and resupply them to reputed shopping centres and stores, the CID official said.
They sold it in Dhaka's reputed areas like Gulshan, Banani, and Dhanmondi, he said.
