Karnataka suspends food licences of Amazon, Instamart and BigBasket over Datura

Karnataka's Food Safety and Drug Administration Department has suspended the food licences of Amazon, Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket until further orders after inspectors found Datura fruits and seeds sold on the three platforms as food.

The order, signed by Food Safety Commissioner K. Srinivas and dated 24 August, directs the companies to remove every listing, advertisement and promotion that offers Datura, also called Dhatura or thorn apple, for human consumption. It also suspends the licences and registrations of the sellers and warehouses that supplied the platforms.

How the case started

Health Minister U.T. Khader told the Financial Express that the trigger was a social media complaint. Instamart had sent Datura fruit as a free gift with an order. The packet carried an FSSAI mark. A child ate the fruit. That complaint opened a wider inspection.

Officials said packets in godowns carried FSSAI licence or registration numbers and that stock was being aggregated before it moved through the apps. Storing, displaying or selling the fruit and seeds as food is not permitted, the department held.

Datura stramonium sits in the nightshade family. Unpurified fruit and seeds can cause delirium, coma and, in extreme cases, death. The plant is used in some ritual and folk-medicine settings after processing. Sold raw as a grocery item, it is a poison.

What each company told the department

All three platforms were called for a hearing. Amazon did not file a written response. Swiggy Instamart asked for more time and did not produce documents on what it had already done with the listings. BigBasket said it had stopped the sales and would relabel future listings as not for human consumption.

That last proposal is the core regulatory fight. Karnataka's order treats Datura offered through a food licence as a food-safety offence, not as a labelling gap. Changing the caption after a child has already eaten a free sample does not, by itself, restore a suspended licence.

The companies must file compliance reports at once. Revocation will be considered only after a separate hearing. Until then the suspensions stay in force. The order also bars the platforms and other food business operators from selling, storing, distributing or promoting Datura fruit or seeds as food anywhere in the state.

Why a platform licence is the sharper tool

Karnataka had spent a month on shop-level inspections before it moved against the platforms themselves. A seller takedown leaves the marketplace intact. A licence suspension hits the company that collects the order, runs the warehouse and prints the FSSAI number on the bag.

Amazon, Instamart and BigBasket are the three largest grocery pipes in many Indian cities. A state-level food-licence freeze does not shut their websites nationwide, but it does freeze the legal basis on which they store and dispatch food from Karnataka dark stores. Other states can copy the method if similar listings appear on their own portals.

The case also tests how FSSAI numbers travel through marketplace logistics. If a warehouse can attach a licence number to a poisonous plant and push it as a free add-on, the number has become a sticker rather than a control. Srinivas's order treats that failure as the platforms' problem, not only the third-party seller's.

Whether the licences return will depend on proof that the listings are gone, that warehouse stock has been seized or destroyed, and that the companies can show how a toxic plant passed their own intake filters. The child's case is the fact that made the file move from inspection notes to a statewide suspension.