Delhi Court Orders Inquiry Into Claims of Poisons in Soft Drinks

An Indian judge yesterday ordered an independent scientific investigation into allegations that Pepsi drinks sold in India contain dangerously high levels of pesticides.

The judge, Justice BD Ahmed, said fresh tests should be carried out on Pepsi products from across the country over the next three weeks.

The results from a government laboratory should then be published in an attempt to settle the row over whether Pepsi and Coca-Cola products are safe to drink. The judge's intervention came after Pepsi approached the high court in an attempt to suppress a damaging report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an independent Delhi-based research group.

Last week the CSE claimed that pesticide levels in some Pepsi and Coca-Cola drinks were respectively 36 and 30 times higher than EU safety standards.

The report has led to a catastrophic slump in Coke and Pepsi sales across the subcontinent, and provoked a furious reaction from the two soft drinks giants, which have cast aside their usual fierce rivalry to threaten legal action.

Parties from across the political spectrum in India have launched their own boycotts of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, while the drinks have been unceremoniously removed from the canteen of India's parliament building.

The issue has united right and left. In communist-controlled West Bengal, officials have carried out their own tests. In Bombay, meanwhile, activists belonging to India's ruling party, the Hindu nationalist BJP, have smashed Pepsi bottles, trampled on cups, and jumped on posters featuring Kareena Kapoor, the latest Bollywood starlet to promote the drink.

Even the People's War group, which has been waging a lonely Maoist rebellion from the forests of eastern India, have called for the drinks to be withdrawn.

Speaking outside the high court in New Delhi yesterday, Sumitra Narain, the head of the CSE, said she welcomed an independent scientific investigation into her organisation's findings.

"We wanted the court to intervene and we are happy with the result," she said. There were no standards in India for what was acceptable for soft drinks, she added. If consumed over a long period, the pesticides could cause cancer, damage to the immune and nervous systems and birth defects, her report claimed.

Both Pepsi and Coca-Cola have pointed out that the CSE's laboratory where samples were tested in February is not accredited to the government of India, and have described its findings as "dubious".

Yesterday Pepsi's lawyer, Ajit Yadav, accused the centre of failing to act responsibly and said he welcomed the high court's ruling.

The soft drinks row is merely the latest flare-up in an ongoing saga. In 1977 India's then socialist government threw Coca-Cola out of the country, together with the computer giant IBM. But Coke and Pepsi triumphantly returned to the subcontinent in the early 90s when the country embarked on an economic programme of liberalisation.

Both companies hired Bollywood and sporting stars to front advertising campaigns - with the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar batting for Pepsi against Coke's male pin-up actor Hrithik Roshan.

The campaigns seemed to have worked. In March 2001 the Indian government estimated that 6,540m cold drinks bottles had been sold across India - roughly six bottles for each Indian each year, in a country that accounts for a third of the world's poor.