Southall shop banned from selling alcohol after supermarket wines found on shelves

A Southall shop has been banned from selling alcohol after Marks and Spencer prosseco and Tesco wine was found on its shelves. Staff at Sapna Express in The Green had been taking the labels off supermarket alcohol and selling it as their own. The shop was also selling counterfeit cigarettes.

Ealing Council seized roughly £1,250 worth of illicit goods from the shop over a series of raids including 1,540 cigarettes, 20 litres of spirits and wine and over 2kg of Indian tobacco. Ealing Council decided to strip the shop of its alcohol licence on Wednesday after discovering a number of serious breaches.

Trading officers searched the shop twice this year and officers discovered labels glued over alcohol labels when they searched the shop on July 25, 2017. When trading standard officers visited the shop on January 25, 2022 they found large bottles of M&S prosecco priced at £12.99.

When they took a closer look at the bottles they saw the M&S branding had been trimmed off. A trading officer told Ealing Council in January: “The shop worker was asked to contact the owner and ask him to attend the shop. He telephoned him and when he got through he said in Punjabi: ‘You need to attend shop, we have been captured.’ This was translated by one of the police officers present.”

He added: “On July 20, 2022, Officer Gohery and myself attended the premises at 5.30pm with police officers from the Southall ward team as part of an operation targeting street drinking and premises that were believed to be purchasing stolen alcohol.

“While inspecting the alcohol behind the counter, I noticed a large quantity of wine spread around the display shelves that are sold in Tesco’s. It was not priced and when the bottles were removed from the shelves it was discovered that the security labels were still attached to the bottles.

“On the floor behind the counter was a large cardboard box that contained another 22 bottles of various wines some of which still had the security labels attached.”

Erectile dysfunction pills, illicit cigarettes and Indian tobacco were also found in a box during the search. Shop owner Manmun Babar claimed he had rented out the shop and he was not aware of the breaches to the license.

But Ealing Council ruled that he must have been aware of what was going on and paperwork had been handed to Mr Babar’s son after one of the raids.

Ealing Licensing chair Anthony Kelly said: “Mr Babar remained in control of the license at all material times – as premises license holder and designated supervisor.

“While he had stated he handed over the running of the shop he retained responsibility for it and hadn’t taken any steps to make sure it was being run properly. Mr Babar was made aware and had knowledge of the breaches that led to the review.”