Government seizes Soms distillery and revokes licenses due to child labor | Company news

Indian authorities said on Wednesday they would seize a Som Group distillery and temporarily suspend the factory’s production licenses after India’s child rights agency found that 59 children were working illegally at the site.

Police launched an investigation into Som after the National Commission for Protection of Children’s Rights (NCPCR) caught 39 boys and 20 girls working at the factory last week. The agency also released photos of children’s hands showing burns from contact with chemicals.

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“We have sent the police to ensure that there are no problems during the sealing process,” Vikas Kumar Shahwal, a senior police officer from Madhya Pradesh, told Reuters.

The state government said in a separate order that it was temporarily suspending the plant’s manufacturing licenses and had asked the Ministry of Labour to investigate the matter.

Som did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to the stock exchange earlier this week, Som Distilleries and Breweries Ltd said the issue involved a facility operated by its “associated private limited company” which used labour from contractors who may not have carried out proper age verification checks.

Its services have been suspended, Som said, adding that it is cooperating with authorities. The company’s shares have fallen 7 percent this week.

Some of the children working at the distillery were brought to the factory in school buses, NCPCR chief Priyank Kanoongo told Reuters on Wednesday.

“They were enrolled in a school and came on school buses. So people thought they were going to school, but they were working in the liquor factory,” Kanoongo said.

Som is one of the smaller distilleries in India’s thriving alcohol industry, which includes both foreign and domestic companies. The company’s website describes it as an “internationally recognized brand” available in over 20 markets, including the US, New Zealand and the UK.

Child labor is a problem in India. In 2021, Reuters reported that an external audit of two Carlsberg warehouses at a site in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand found underage workers.

Carlsberg stated at the time that “the cooperation with the third-party provider was terminated with immediate effect in 2018 due to the findings of the internal report.”