trichy a raid by officials of the food safety wing at shops around chatram bus stand in the city brought to light the sale of substandard cool drinks and buttermilk the raid also yielded banned tobacco products from these shops a team of officials carried out the raid at around 50 shops around the stand which is the hub of buses proceeding to places on the outskirts of trichy and also to neighbouring districts like karur during the raid officials found 25 bottles of unbranded cool drinks and some packets of buttermilk both the items did not bear any name date of manufacture date of expiry and other required details we conducted the check as part of regular inspections we found cool drinks and buttermilk which did not have any information about their manufacturer vendors said that they dont know about the origin of such cool drinks we seized the products said dr a ramakrishnan designated officer food safety wing in trichy artificially flavoured juices are in great demand with mostly poor people consuming them shops selling such beverages are across the city though concentrated in dense public places like the central and chatram bus stands dr ramakrishnan advised people to be careful while buying packed cool drinks people should verify the dates of manufacture and expiry before consuming them to avoid any health complications he said officials are yet to ascertain the quality of the packs seized on tuesday officials took samples of artificially flavoured juices from some shops these samples will be sent for testing in government laboratory the officials warned vendors about penalties if substandard beverages are sold the raid also exposed the continuing sale of banned tobacco products in the city the raiding parties seized some tobacco products from a few shops authorities have been conducting inspections at regular intervals in their effort to stamp out sale of prohibited tobacco products