The chilli packet borrowed a brand. Thirty percent of the powder was wood.

A masala unit in Medipalli was packing chilli powder that was, on the police account, thirty percent wood. The packets carried another brand’s name. The seizure is 10,890 kilograms. The estimate is about ₹25 lakh. Two operators are in custody. This is not the Hyderabad adulterated-ghee file. It is a Medchal raid with its own locked numbers.

SOT police and food-adulteration monitoring teams went jointly to Sai Tirumala Enterprises in Srinivasnagar Colony, Medipalli, Medchal-Malkajgiri district. The public card is dated 20 August 2026, with a Hyderabad dateline. Joint is the word that matters at the gate. A special operations team and a food-adulteration watch walked into the same unit.

What they say they found was turmeric, chilli powder, coriander powder and garam masala being made in unsanitary conditions. Unsanitary is the card’s adjective. It is not a laboratory sheet. This desk will not add a swab, a rodent count, or a drain that nobody described.

On chilli powder the card is more precise. It was mixed with 30 percent wood powder. That is the only lab-style figure in this file. Thirty percent is not a rumour. It is the fraction police have put on the chilli. This desk will not extend that fraction to the turmeric, the coriander or the garam masala. Those three are in the unsanitary sentence. They are not in the wood-powder sentence.

The packets were labelled as a duplicate of the Swadeshi Swastik brand. Duplicate is a police word for a lookalike. It is not a finding that the real brand ran the unit. Swadeshi Swastik is the name that was borrowed. Sai Tirumala Enterprises is the name on the gate.

Police seized 10,890 kilograms of adulterated foodstuffs, estimated at about ₹25 lakh. Kilograms are a weighment. ₹25 lakh is an estimate, and the card says “about.” About is not an invoice. The two operators taken into custody are Satyanarayana and Rudrashekar. Custody is not a conviction. The card does not give their ages, their shares, or a third name. This desk will not invent a proprietor’s family tree.

What is not in this file is a further laboratory breakdown — lead, colour, starch, anything beyond the 30 percent wood in the chilli. A reader who has just seen a Hyderabad ghee raid should not merge the two kitchens. Different unit. Different district. Different commodity. Different seizure weight. The ghee story is another cutting. This one is masala at Medipalli.

Medchal-Malkajgiri sits on the Hyderabad rim. Medipalli is a local name inside that rim. A unit that can put 10,890 kilograms on the floor is not a kitchen mixie. It is a packing operation that, on the police account, had already chosen a brand to copy and a wood fraction to stretch the chilli.

SOT is a police instrument. Food-adulteration monitoring is a civic instrument. Together they produce a seizure and two arrests. They do not, on these facts, produce a trial. Until a court reads the 10,890 kilograms and the 30 percent, the public sentences stay as allegations of a raid: unsanitary making of four masalas, wood in the chilli, a duplicate Swadeshi Swastik label, about ₹25 lakh, Satyanarayana and Rudrashekar in custody.

A spice packet is a household object. Wood powder is not a spice. Thirty percent is enough to turn a kitchen tin into a police exhibit. The rest of the 10,890 kilograms will have to be explained by the two men in custody, or by a charge sheet that has not yet been read here. This desk will wait for that paper. It will not test the turmeric in a sentence the card did not write.