Manufacture, Sale or Storage of Spurious Goods: Punishment under Section 91, with Cognizance and Compounding

The spurious product is the counterfeit with consequences: goods falsely claimed to be genuine, the fake medicine, the counterfeit part, the imitation sold as the brand, whose danger lies precisely in the trust the false claim buys. Section 91 punishes their manufacture, storage, sale, distribution and import on a harm-graded scale rising to life imprisonment, and this note examines the offence, its grades and consequences, and closes with the chapter's procedural frame, cognizance and compounding, as it governs the consumer-protection offences.

1. The Offence

Spurious goods (Section 2(43)): goods which are falsely claimed to be genuine, the definition's centre is the false claim of genuineness: the counterfeit brand, the imitation drug, the part passed off as the original manufacturer's. It is deception about identity and origin, where adulteration is corruption of composition; the fake that also contains harmful substitutes may be both.
The conduct: manufacturing for sale, storing, selling, distributing or importing spurious goods, the same full-chain sweep as Section 90, catching the counterfeiter, the stockist, the seller and the importer of fakes alike.
The statutory neighbours: making and selling spurious goods is also an unfair trade practice (Section 2(47)), feeding the civil and CCPA tracks, and the counterfeit engages trademark and, for drugs, the drugs law's spurious-drugs offences, which run alongside under Section 100.

2. The Grades and Consequences

Consequence of the spurious goods	Punishment
Causes injury not amounting to grievous hurt to the consumer	Imprisonment up to one year and fine up to three lakh rupees
Causes grievous hurt	Imprisonment up to seven years and fine up to five lakh rupees
Results in death of the consumer	Imprisonment of not less than seven years, extendable to imprisonment for life, and fine of not less than ten lakh rupees

Harm-graded, from injury upward: Section 91's scale begins at injury, the spurious sale without resulting harm is left to the unfair-practice, trademark and sectoral machinery, while the fake that hurts meets the same aggravated ladder as adulteration: grievous hurt at seven years, death at seven years to life with the ten-lakh minimum fine.
Cognizable and non-bailable: the aggravated grades, grievous hurt and death, are cognizable and non-bailable, arrest and investigation on the ordinary criminal machinery, bail in the court's discretion.
Licence consequences: as with adulteration, conviction carries the trade sanction, suspension of any licence up to two years on first conviction, cancellation on the second, the counterfeiter loses the licence the fake traded on.
The gravest case in practice: the spurious drug that kills is the section's paradigm, and prosecution there runs with the drugs law's parallel offences, the consumer statute adding its own count and its civil and regulatory consequences.

3. Cognizance and Compounding: The Chapter's Procedural Frame

Chapter VII closes with the rules that decide who can set prosecution in motion and which offences can be settled. Cognizance (Section 92): no court takes cognizance of an offence under Section 88 or Section 89, the defiance and advertising offences, except on a complaint made by the Central Authority or an officer authorised by it: those two offences are the regulator's escalation, closed to private complainants. The product offences of Sections 90 and 91 carry no such filter: they move on the ordinary criminal machinery, police registration and Magistrate's cognizance, which fits their gravity, the injured consumer's family does not wait on a regulator to prosecute the fake that killed. Compounding: the compoundable pair is the same, Sections 88 and 89, settled on payment before or after institution, with the bar on repeat compounding of the same offender within the cooling period; the harm-graded product offences are not compoundable, bodily harm is not a negotiable wrong. And the chapter's last discipline points inward: vexatious search (Section 93), the Director-General or officer searching without reasonable ground is himself punishable, the counterweight that keeps the investigation powers honest. The resulting map is tidy: regulator-gated, compoundable offences protecting the machinery; openly prosecutable, non-compoundable offences punishing harm to the body.

⚠ Key point

Spurious goods are goods falsely claimed to be genuine (Section 2(43)), and Section 91 punishes their whole commercial chain by the harm done: one year and three lakh for simple injury, seven years and five lakh for grievous hurt, seven years to life and at least ten lakh for death, the aggravated grades cognizable and non-bailable, with licence suspension and cancellation. The chapter's frame: Sections 88 and 89 prosecuted only on the CCPA's complaint and compoundable; Sections 90 and 91 open to ordinary prosecution and not compoundable; vexatious search itself an offence (Section 93).

4. Related Topics and Provisions

Adulterated products under Section 90 (Topic 91): the corruption counterpart
Offences and penalties complete notes (Topic 88): the chapter in one place
Unfair trade practice (Topic 16): spurious goods in the civil vocabulary
CCPA powers (Topics 26 and 27): recall and class action against the fake's market