Maintaining hygiene in online food delivery has become a growing concern. A woman from Kolkata, named Sneha, recently shared her ordeal after purchasing baby food from the grocery delivery app BigBasket. In a video making rounds on the internet, the mother of a 4.5-month-old claimed that she smelled phenyl in the formula milk powder pack as soon as she opened it. The visibly distressed mother said, "Hello, everyone. I am making a conscious video. My hands are still shivering (due to the disturbing incident). It could have been a big loss for me. So that your kids do not suffer any loss, that's why I am making this video. Yesterday I ordered a formula milk for my child from BigBasket because it was not available in Apollo (Pharmacy)."
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Pointing towards the poorly packaged container in the video, she continued, "My child's age is only 4.5 months. This is the formula milk. I opened the container in the morning. You can also see the seal of the milk can. The moment I opened it, it smelled like phenyl. At first, I thought it was not possible, but when I checked again, the smell was strong. Look at the packaging- it's all sticky and smells like phenyl."
She raised questions for the grocery platform, highlighting the risk of what might have happened if she had fed the milk to her child. She also mentioned, "When I complained to BigBasket, they just said sorry. Sorry, it was a mistake. If I had mistakenly fed my child this formula milk, do they think their sorry would have saved my baby? They are not giving any answer," adding, "I request you all, never buy anything from BigBasket, which is for children only."
"Shame on you #bigbasket, amar bachha ta aj sesh hoye jeto (It would have been worse for my child).. #KolkataPolice, please take action on this App," read the caption of her video.
The video has triggered widespread anger and concern among social media users.
A user wrote, "Report it in the Consumer Court."
Another person, claiming to be associated with the West Bengal Consumer Affairs Department, urged her, saying, "Please file a complaint in the Consumer Commission, Rajarhat, New Town. I will be happy to help."
Someone said, "Don't order food items online. They rarely send good items."
Echoing the same sentiment, a person also mentioned, "It's not only BigBasket; all shopping apps are the same. They don't care about health, they just want to sell their products at any cost."
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As of now, BigBasket has not publicly issued any statement regarding this incident. NDTV has reached out to Bigbasket for a comment, but they are yet to respond.