Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL) has filed an FIR against its own erstwhile authorised dealer Kashmir Steel Corporation of Jammu, for manufacturing and supplying spurious steel rebars illegally bearing the SAIL TMT mark for use in various projects in Jammu and Srinagar. SAIL plans to also slap huge damages on the company for causing damage to its reputation by misuse of SAIL’s registered trademark.
The FIR states that the actual quantity of SAIL TMT rebars made available for retail sales to its dealer KSC during the last one year was only 265 tonnes. However, the dealer supplied much higher quantity running into several thousand tonnes of spurious steel for use in infrastructure projects in Jammu & Kashmir by branding it as SAIL steel.
The Central Marketing Organisation (CMO) has also complained that KSC had forged its dealership certificate by extending its validity up to January 2016 when it was valid only till January 2014.
A SAIL statement said that the Central Marketing Organisation had earlier filed a police complaint against a Hyderabad-based company for allegedly stocking spurious TMT rebars bearing the SAIL trademark at its project sites in Jammu & Kashmir.
Earlier last week, the CMO had also filed legal charges against one of its own conversion agents, SKS Ispat of Raipur, for misusing its logo and trademark.
In addition, FIRs were lodged against Raipur-based re-rollers Pankaj Ispat and Alankar Alloys, which were found to be infringing trademark laws by illegally manufacturing TMT bars bearing SAIL trademarks in their factories.
