A consumer, out to quench his thirst, got more than what he had paid for when he found an empty sachet of gutkha (chewing tobacco) in a 200 ml sealed bottle of Thums Up.

The bottle, manufactured at the Wada facility of Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages in Maharashtra, was bought from a retailer in Chembur, a Mumbai suburb.

Soft drinks, hard truths

When the newspaper contacted Coca-Cola officials, a consumer response co-ordinator and a quality consultant from the company visited the Business Standard office to inspect the contaminated bottle.

Their primary observation was that the bottle had no batch date (printed on the neck of the bottle) and hence it would be difficult to trace the source of contamination.

A company statement said that only "a detailed laboratory test will determine the authencity of the bottle". Batch dates are erased only when the bottles are cleaned at the bottling facilities before refilling. It is not possible to erase the batch date even by scraping it with a coin.

The Chembur retailer claimed that the bottle was delivered by the company's delivery van. This hints at a possible lapse in the company's supply chain even if the product is a counterfeit one and not produced at its factory.

Even if the contaminated bottle, in the possession of this newspaper, is not a genuine product, it can easily pass of as one. For instance, it has the same level of content like any other 200 ml bottle of Thums Up.

Even the sealing patterns of the bottle is the same as the other bottles. Not to mention the finer details in the bottle cap the embossed logos and so on.

"We cannot rule out the possibility of availability of spurious bottles in the market," said a company statement issued to Business Standard.

According to Coca-Cola's communications agency, the company receives three-four complaints of contaminated bottles every month, in the Mumbai region alone. However most of the cases are of spurious bottles.

The company statement cites the seizure of 3,000 spurious Coca-Cola bottles during a recent raid in Dahanu in Maharashtra.

The communication agency claimed that in Goregaon, a western Mumbai suburb, spurious soft drink manufacturers thrive in an industrial estate.