A food safety officer has become a social media star in India - why?

Cockroaches scurry across kitchen floors. Spider webs cling to walls. Spoiled vegetables rot in corners, while food counters show signs of pest infestation.

One might assume these scenes belong to a struggling restaurant. But the photos are from a members-only club in Mumbai - India's financial capital and the capital of its richest state Maharashtra.

They are among dozens of photos and videos that have gone viral since May, after Maharashtra's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began a series of inspections at restaurants, cafes and other food businesses across the state.

At the centre of the crackdown is 51-year-old civil servant Tukaram Mundhe, the state's new food commissioner.

Since taking charge in May, Mundhe has overseen thousands of inspections and says food safety laws must be enforced regardless of a business's size, influence or reputation.

His department has suspended the licences of several quick-commerce warehouses and sent notices to Bollywood celebrities for doing advertisements suspected of indirectly promoting restricted products.

"These actions are taken in public health interest. We will continue to take them against violations," Mundhe told the BBC.

The campaign has made Mundhe a recognisable face across India, rare for a civil servant.

Videos of his inspections and press briefings circulate widely on social media, where reels and podcasts have turned him into an unlikely celebrity.

But the spotlight - and the controversy that often comes with it - is nothing new to him.

An officer in the Indian Administrative Service, Mundhe has more than two decades of experience and has been transferred so often that reports say the number exceeds his years in service, though he declines to confirm it.

"I have stopped counting my transfers," he told the BBC.

Admirers see the transfers as evidence of his uncompromising style. Critics argue that this confrontational approach has put him at odds with colleagues and elected representatives.

In the past decade, Mundhe has won praise for his handling of the Covid pandemic outbreak during his time as Nagpur city's municipal commissioner and earlier for his work on water conservation in Maharashtra's drought-prone regions.

"When he was transferred out of Nagpur during the pandemic, thousands showed up outside his home to bid him farewell. It took him an hour just to reach his car," says Shafi Pathan, a journalist who's written Mundhe's biography in the local Marathi language.

But his food-safety crackdown has brought him the most attention yet.

The scale of India's food-safety problem is serious and numbers presented to the parliament in July offer a glimpse of just how widespread the issue is.

Of 223,808 food samples tested across India in 2025 and 2026, nearly one in five , external were found to be "non-conforming" - which means the samples were either unsafe, substandard or mislabelled.

And Mundhe has responded with an unusually aggressive enforcement drive.

By the end of July, his department had carried out more than 3,100 inspections across the state - a number he expects has since crossed 4,000.

Around 300 licences had been suspended and more than 1,000 improvement notices issued. A new complaints portal had also received more than 16,000 complaints in its first three months, Mundhe said.

"Hygiene has always been a problem here," Pawan Agarwal, former chief of India's food regulator, told the BBC. "What Mundhe has done differently is make it visible".

Consumers have responded positively to that visibility, Agarwal says. Unlike in India's conventional system, where food safety cases and consumer complaints can take years to move through regulators and courts, enforcement actions are now playing out in public.

The campaign has also made Mundhe a social media star - he now has more than 3.8 million followers on Instagram.

However, even as consumers welcome the speed and visibility of his actions, many in the food industry are less enthusiastic.

Restaurant associations allege the official has been bypassing a statutory process, while courts have termed some of his actions "high-handed".

Under India's food safety laws, businesses are usually given time to fix violations before regulators suspend or cancel their licences. Regulators can suspend licences immediately only in urgent public health situations but must record their reasons.

"While compliance is non-negotiable, high-handed approaches - like public naming-and-shaming, instant suspensions over minor procedural or rectifiable issues and treating administrative oversights with harsh penal measures - create panic rather than reform," said Niranjan Laxman Shetty, legal chairman of hospitality association Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association.

Responding to the criticism, Mundhe said his raids are lawful and that suspensions are only for extreme cases. However, some businesses have publicly claimed that they've been shut over minor violations, without warning or a chance to improve first.

His actions have also faced legal challenges. In some cases, courts have overturned licence suspensions, ordered compensation for affected businesses and criticised the regulator's approach.

In August, for instance, the Bombay high court ordered , external Mundhe's department to pay 500,000 rupees ($5,291; £3,893) in compensation to a sweets shop whose licence remained suspended even after a reinspection found it 98% compliant with the law.

The court said the regulator's intentions were "laudable" but that it had "gone overboard".

The judges also raised a question - was the regulator applying the same scrutiny to government establishments as it was to private businesses?

Within a day of that criticism, Mundhe's team inspected canteens in the state's high court complex and flagged violations.

For Mundhe, it is proof that the rules apply equally to everyone.

"Had the food business operators or establishment complied with existing regulations, I would not be needed to take those actions," Mundhe told the BBC.

He also insists that they are not trying to shut down businesses but only ensure safety.

"We are not here to close down or suspend every licensee," he said at an event last week. "We are here to ensure food is safe, food is not substandard, it is not misbranded and it is good for consumption."

The restaurant inspections - which dominate social media - are only a part of his work.

Mundhe has enforced bans on using newspapers to wrap food, synthetic dyes and banned analogue paneer - non-dairy cottage cheese substitutes.

Its focus has now shifted to schools. The department has ordered canteens, hostel kitchens and midday meal suppliers to obtain proper licences, and banned the sale of food high in fat, sugar or salt within 50m of schools.

But the bigger question is what happens once Mundhe moves on to his next post.

"The efforts of Mundhe have created a nationwide awareness about food safety, both amongst businesses and consumers, which is desirable - but not sustainable," says Agarwal.

The challenge is to build systems that outlast an individual officer, he adds.

For now, however, the effects are being felt even on the streets.

Yuvraj Yadav, who sells sandwiches in a Mumbai suburb, says he used to wrap them in discarded newspapers, despite concerns that chemicals in the printing ink can leach into food. He recently switched to greaseproof paper after hearing about the ban.

"We started this a few months ago after newspapers were not allowed for packing as it's bad for health," he says.