THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A lawyer from Kerala claims to have found a rat's tail in a bottle of Fanta, a soft drink from the Coca Cola company.
MH Sharfudeen said he found the object in a 200 ml Fanta bottle that he bought on Aug 1 in Thiruvananthapuram. He is also understood to have shown the bottle to local reporters.
"We have no doubt that this is a rat's tail and we now demand an explanation from the company. We are going to file a petition against the company under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act," said senior advocate SP Deepak.
"We also demand that the Kerala government immediately enforce a ban on the sale of all Fanta soft drinks. This particular product has the batch number 1143 B dated April 13, 2005," said another advocate S Ajithkumar.
Coca Cola is yet to respond to the allegation, the advocates said. Sharfudeen said the bottle had not been opened.
With Coca Cola's bottling plant at Palakkad in Kerala closed, the company's products are now brought in from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
The allegation against Coke comes at a time when it is set to reopen its Palakkad bottling plant after having got a favourable verdict from the Kerala High Court last month, despite widespread protests against the factory for its over utilisation of groundwater in the area.
The state government has said it will approach the Supreme Court against the high court order allowing the Coke plant to reopen.
