Pain relief drugs found in boxes of Tesco's chocolate and nut ice cream cones

Discovery: Painkillers found in Tesco's chocolate and nut cones, pictured, could have been put there on purpose, police believe

Pain relief tablets found in boxes of Tesco's own brand chocolate and nut cones could have been put there maliciously, it has been claimed today

Ice cream firm R&R, based near Northallerton, North Yorkshire, is being investigated as police suspect the ice creams were tampered with on purpose.

Officers say the drugs could have been put into the cones while the products were at the company's factory in Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire.

Detective Superintendent Dai Malyn from the North Yorkshire Police' major crime unit said: 'What we are trying to identify is how that product became contaminated.

'It is a challenging investigation, because what we have got to try and identify was how and where and who was responsible for that contamination, and was it deliberate contamination.

'With the process chain of all the ingredients that go into making an item like that, we don’t know for sure where that contamination took place.'

Mr Malyn added that the possibility of malicious contamination was 'one of the lines of inquiry' and his 'gut instinct' is that it was a 'deliberate contamination'.

He added: 'If it was felt to be accidental from the outset, the resources we have put into it probably wouldn’t be to the scale we have done.

'We have got to look at it as "we think it’s suspicious unless we prove otherwise".'

Tesco recalled its own-brand cones in November after two separate packets delivered to two different stores were found to contain the drugs.

One tablet was found in a single cone in each packet.

SOURCE-DAILYM