Ration rice racket busted: 6,000 kg seized from Kerala house; 75,000 kg in two weeks
Officials of the Food and Civil Supplies department have seized more than 6,000 kg of rice and wheat, allegedly diverted from ration shops in Keralam and Tamil Nadu and kept for sale on the black market, from a house at Parassala in Thiruvananthapuram district. The seizure was made on Sunday.
Acting on a tip-off, department officials, assisted by the police, searched a locked house at Karali in Parassala. The house was found filled with sacks of grain. The stock recovered is estimated at over 6,000 kg of rice and wheat, officials said.
The search also yielded bags that officials say were used to repack the grains for sale in the open market. A vehicle found parked in the compound was seized as well, after officials found that it was carrying a fake registration number.
According to the department, rice distributed free of cost through ration shops to economically weaker families in Keralam and Tamil Nadu was allegedly being brought to this house, repacked and then sold at higher prices on the black market.
The seized rice and wheat will be shifted to a government godown and auctioned as per the directions of the District Collector, officials said. The department will file a complaint with the police, on the basis of which a case will be registered and further investigation taken up.
The seizure is the latest in a series of raids along the Keralam-Tamil Nadu border in Thiruvananthapuram district. In the past two weeks alone, officials said, raids at various locations have led to the recovery of more than 75,000 kg of rice. The frequency of the seizures points to an organised channel rather than isolated instances, though officials have not said so in as many words.
Details such as who owns the house at Karali, whether anyone has been named in the case, and how long the alleged operation had been running were not immediately available. The police are expected to take over the investigation once the department's complaint is filed.
Why the public distribution system matters
Rice and wheat move through the public distribution system (PDS), the country's largest food security network, which operates under the National Food Security Act, 2013. Under the Act, eligible households are entitled to subsidised foodgrain. In recent years, the Centre has distributed rice free of cost to beneficiaries under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, and States such as Keralam and Tamil Nadu run their own additional free rice schemes for poor families.
The grains are meant to reach households that depend on them for daily meals. When stock is diverted, the loss falls first on those families, and then on the exchequer, which bears the subsidy. Diversion of PDS grain for sale in the open market has been a long-standing concern flagged by audit bodies and food rights groups.
States have introduced a range of checks over the years, including end-to-end computerisation of ration records, Aadhaar-linked electronic point of sale devices at fair price shops, and GPS tracking of vehicles carrying foodgrain. Officials have previously said that tighter monitoring has improved detection, which may partly explain the volume of seizures reported from a single district in a fortnight.
The auction route for confiscated grain is standard practice. It is intended to prevent the recovered stock from returning to the black market and to recover some of its value.
What remains unclear is the scale of the network behind the Parassala seizure. Officials say the investigation will establish who supplied the grain, who repacked it, and where it was being sold. Until then, the seizure stands as one more data point in a pattern that the district administration has been watching closely since the raids began.
