By Richard Thomas

India was already in trouble with the Scotch Whisky Association for exporting Indian not-really-whisky products to Europe, but now it seems you can’t even trust the labeling of scotch whisky in India itself. According to the Times of India, a group of criminals had allegedly been refilling old foreign liquor bottles with locally made alcohol and selling them onto retailers and distributors at discount rates.

New Dehli police arrested two members of the counterfeit liquor ring and seized Chinese-made bottle caps for Ballantine’s, Chivas Regal, Johnnie Walker, Glenfiddich, Glenlivet and VAT 69, along with caps for other types of liquor, along with three cases of faked Johnnie Walker Black.

The old scotch bottles were refilled with what is known as Indian-made Foreign Liquor (IMFLs), a catch-all term describing any hard liquor made in India to copy or mimic a non-indigenous type of alcohol. Most of these IMFLS are neutral spirits made from molasses, essentially rum.

Most legitimate Indian whiskies are made using mostly IMFL blended with a small proportion of scotch whisky imported into India. Therefore the actual content of the fake scotch isn’t very far removed from what is sold by the bulk of India’s whisky brands.