If you are beauty conscious and use cosmetics, you should be worried that fakes of over 290 well-known brands have made it to the market.
If you are beauty conscious and use cosmetics, you should be worried that fakes of over 290 well-known brands have made it to the market.
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) sleuths of Mumbai and Bangalore police raided Hong Kong Bazaar at Gandhinagar in the city and recovered the different types of counterfeit products.
Most of the fakes were being passed off as genuine products of Hindustan Unilever Limited brands. The fake products included soaps, face creams, pastes, hair oil and shampoos.
Fake cosmetics can be dangerous if used repeatedly.
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Hong Kong Bazaar at Gandhinagar, where a shop was raided. |
On January 12, the Upparpeth police and the IPR sleuths raided a shop at Old Hong Kong Bazaar and arrested Kishan Choudhary (26) and Zameer Ahmed (35), besides seizing the fake products.
Officials said Kishen and Zameer not only violated the copyright law but also brought about huge losses on the company whose products were being counterfeited.
Officials said the two used to put inferior cosmetics in the packaging of recognized brands, then market these in shops by saying they were offering discounts.
The police said the ingredients used were poor and contained toxic chemicals.
They said Hindustan Unilever would keep making slight changes in the logo for each series of their products from time to time, and the arrested men were unaware of it, which helped in catching them.
Hindustan Unilever covers more than 60 per cent of the Indian cosmetics market.
IPR Director Gulpanag Makhani said, "We are legally contracted with Hindustan Unilever and we knew about the counterfeiting from our source and raided the place with the help of the Bangalore police and seized more than 290 fake products.
It is easy to identify the forged products because cheaters will keep to the same old packaging."
Police Sub-Inspector R Prakash, who participated in the raid, said, "We filed cases against the arrested under the Copyright Act and for cheating."
