The Madhya Pradesh government has invoked stringent National Security Act (NSA) against 41 persons in the last six months for alleged adulteration of food, milk and dairy products, an official said on Thursday.
Besides them, cases have also been registered against 108 people under different sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) during this period for allegedly adulterating food or selling it, the official said.
The action was taken under a special drive, which the state government has been running since July 19 last year.
"As part of the drive, we collected 11,536 food samples and sent them for testing. Of them, the test reports of 4,491 samples are out," Madhya Pradesh Food and Drug Department Joint Controller D K Nagendra said.
He said that while no adulteration was found in 2,885 samples, 1,606 others were found violating the food safety standards.
Besides this special drive against food adulteration, the state government has also cracked a whip on the traders, who are found ripening fruits using toxic chemicals.