Thousands of such fake drinking water bottles are being traded in collaboration with decorators and brokers at social gatherings, public meetings, family festivities and retail shops.

Spot visits to the city's Chankherpool, Nawab Katra and Nazimuddin roads recently revealed many vendors do a brisk business selling empty plastic water bottles to the wholesalers.

Every day between three and five thousand empty bottles are purchased from garbage collectors, who have found it a lucrative business.

"I make between Tk 200 and Tk 400 a day selling the unbroken and still fresh-looking bottles with the original labels on," said Kader Mia, who fetches garbage from opposite the Dhaka Medical College Hospital and other places in Bakhshibazar.

Nurul Islam, another garbage picker, said "I have fixed buyers in Chankerpool who often pay me in advance to fetch empty plastic bottles. On average I make Tk 200 to Tk 350 a day from this occupation, which I've been doing for the last two years."

When this correspondent approached a number of brokers to talk about their business, they all acknowledged selling the accumulated bottles to other parties who claim to recycle the bottles. None of them, however, acknowledged having any link with refilling the bottles with tap water and putting counterfeit seals on them for retail sale.

"We don't know what happens to the bottles after the empty bottles are sold out to third party dealers. But presumably the bottles are reused to be sold as drinking water bottles," said Kalam, who owns three small warehouses in Nazimuddin Road where the bottles are preserved.

The Daily Star published a story titled, 'Bottled danger' on October 1, 2003, highlighting the illegal water business. The day after the publication, concerned officials from the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute (BSTI) called this corespondent and made known their decision to raid the illegal businesses and to seize equipment used for making false security seals for the bottles.

However, sources said the BSTI inspection team never raided the businesses, allowing the supply of the illegal products to continue uninterrupted across the country.

According to the traders, each empty bottle with an unbroken seal fetches Tk 0.20 0.30 depending on the quality of the bottle.

Once a bottle, mostly one litre containers, is filled with tap water, a new lid is fixed with a transparent plastic label made to look like a security seal. To carry out such business, traders have set up small bottle labelling plants on the other side of Buriganga river in Keraniganj, supposedly to escape police interference.

During visits in guise of a common inhabitant to the areas, this correspondent found young boys engaged in washing bottles and separating the discarded ones inside tin-shed thatched booths, while older men were occupied in fixing the labels using hand-held machines.

Anonymous sources said that every day between one and two thousand bottles of water are sent to their 'agents' for distribution for sale. Each intact one litre bottle fetches Tk 3 while the same when sold at retail stores goes for the fixed retail price of Tk 10 apiece set by the original manufacturer. In fact, some retailers are keen to sell such counterfeit drinking water bottles, as the margin of profit is huge.

But to escape suspicion, the bottles are mostly sold at social get-togethers, meeting places and wedding functions, where the safety seals are removed beforehand and kept ready for serving.

Some manufacturers of bottled water, when contacted recently, acknowledged facing similar problems. They said the counterfeit or adulterated water bottles cost much less than the genuine ones. To keep pace with the prices, some manufacturers resorted to reducing prices.

"To avoid the supply of counterfeit drinking water bottles, we have arranged fixed clients who receive our products directly from the factory," said an official of a popular brand of drinking water bottle.

When contacted by telephone yesterday, Sub-Inspector Alamgir Kabir of Keraniganj police station said he had no knowledge of these illegal activities, adding, "We raid the areas frequently but never did we come across such illegal businesses."