Fact Check: Raid video, showing Tata Salt packed manually is false

Hyderabad: A video showing Tata salt being manufactured and packed unhygienically at Begum bazaar, in Hyderabad has gone viral on social media (both Facebook and Twitter).

The video shows a small group of people working together packing salt in an unhygienic way manually into Tata salt packets and sealing them with a sealing machine.

Here are some of the accounts that shared the video under the name of Tata salt manufacturers:

There were many more who tweeted the video, asking if it is true.

Fact check:

On receiving the screenshots of the video and performing a reverse image search on Google, with the keywords Tata salt, NewsMeter found that the various shares emerged from a YouTube video on a channel named GURULOCKER. The video was published on October 19, 2019, titled "fake UV filtered High-Quality Tata salt production caught on RAID." This caught our attention.

The description of the video mentioned this:

Police on Thursday raided an industrial unit that was packaging and selling counterfeit grocery, cosmetics and other products and arrested the owner at Sundra village in Mohali's Dera Bassi sub-division. A large quantity of spurious material was seized. The owner has been identified as Krishan Kumar of Manimajra. Around half a dozen employees, including children, have also been rounded up for questioning. The raid was conducted by the Mubarikpur police post personnel based on the complaint of a Mumbai-based company that deals with complaints against counterfeit products. The company's managing director, Rajinder Singh, said he got a tip-off about the Dera Bassi factory selling spurious products in packets of established brands.

A few interesting screenshots from the video shows a person walking around in a police uniform and checking the merchandise.

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We also found the official Facebook and Twitter pages of Tata salt, where they have published an explanation regarding the video, posted on October 15, 2019. The company said that the raid discovered salt being packed in fake pouches resembling Tata Salt packaging.

Though this video was real and the people in the video were manufacturing Tata salt, the claim is not real. The video is from Dera Bassi in Punjab.

We also found a report by Hindustan Times published on October 11, 2019 which reports that the Police on Thursday raided an industrial unit packaging and selling counterfeit grocery, cosmetics and other products and arrested the owner at Sundra village in Mohali's Dera Bassi subdivision. A large quantity of spurious material was also seized.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/factory-packing-selling-counterfeit-products-of-top-brands-busted-in-mohali/story-kTmaKJy6oNZJdCUSDkUdzM.html

This incident took place on October 10, 2019. Around half a dozen employees, including children, have been part of the production. The Mubarikpur police post personnel conducted the raid on the complaint of a Mumbai-based company that deals with complaints against counterfeit products. They also found counterfeit products of famous brands like Baba Ramdev Triple Refined Salt, Aashirvaad flour, Tide and Surf detergent, Lakme Kajal, MDH spices, and Harpic toilet cleaner. Police recovered packaging material of those brands.

The claim, therefore is FALSE.