High Court Upholds Acquittal in Ghee Quality Case

The case concerned ghee, a clarified dairy fat whose composition can vary within a bulk container when it is held at room temperature. The court examined whether the sample used in the prosecution had been obtained in accordance with prescribed inspection requirements before assessing the laboratory evidence against the product.

During cross-examination in the original trial, enforcement officers acknowledged that the storage vessel had not been properly heated and homogenised before the sample was removed. The 600-gram specimen was therefore taken without first ensuring that its contents had been thoroughly melted and mixed.

The sampling requirement was material because high-melting and low-melting fatty acids may separate inside ghee kept at ambient temperature. A portion drawn without prior preparation of the bulk container may not reflect the composition of the product as a whole. The court treated the failure to follow those handling steps as a breach of the rules governing dairy inspections.

Laboratory analysis had described the tested fat as rancid and identified departures from statutory fatty-acid limits applicable to pure clarified butterfat. The court nevertheless held that those results could not support a criminal conviction once the integrity of the initial sampling process had been compromised. The problem concerned the evidentiary foundation on which the chemical findings depended, rather than only the interpretation of the laboratory measurements.

The appellate magistrates also applied the established standard for reviewing an acquittal by a trial court. Such a decision is not to be overturned unless it is shown to involve a manifest illegality or a wholly perverse conclusion. Because the enforcement personnel had accepted that mandatory sampling procedures were not observed, the trial court was found to have acted within the permissible legal framework when it dismissed the charges.

The ruling leaves the acquittal in place and records that food-safety sampling must be capable of producing a scientifically representative specimen. It also distinguishes between evidence indicating that a product may have failed statutory quality thresholds and evidence obtained through a process that did not comply with the required collection protocols.