Makkah, June 14: Makkah Municipality inspectors have busted a gang that sold Zamzam water illegally in the holy city.
The gang, led by a Burmese man with the help of overstaying Yemeni workers, had a filling center in the Tandbawi neighborhood, chief of the municipal team inspecting herbal and illegal medications and food items Fahd Al-Asiri said on Monday.
The secret filling center was raided while its workers were filling plastic cans with Zamzam water in an unhygienic manner, Al-Asiri said.
The official said his inspectors were secretly monitoring the gang for many days and finally pinpointed the exact location where they had been operating.
“In our raid we discovered six barrels each containing 1,000 liters in addition to a huge 4,000-liter container filled with Zamzam water. Since the gang’s location was not far from our office, they could easily have taken precautions when our inspectors approached their place,” he said.
He added that the gang collected Zamzam water from a supply center in Kudai and brought it to their filling center. Then they refilled them in half-liter cans, packed them and put a nylon sticker on each of them to identify it as the holy water without giving any details of who packed them. Then they were sold to foreign pilgrims for SR55 each. The inspectors also discovered after tests that the water they packed contained bacteria.
However the official said he did not detect any evidence to establish that ordinary water was mixed with Zamzam.
–Agencies