Thursday, January 27, 2011


Oil mafia adopts innovative ways to pilfer

Toral VariaToral Varia CNN-IBN 
Updated Jan 28, 2011 at 07:53am IST
Nasik: Just a few days after Malegaon Additional District Collector Yashwant Sonawane was burnt alive for trying to curb the oil mafia in Maharashtra, CNN-IBN gets access to the exclusive and dramatic pictures that show how oil is being pilfered.
The pilferage of fuel was even caught on camera supposedly by Sonawane just days before he was murdered.
The video exclusively available to CNN-IBN displayed how the fuel mafias steal petrol and kerosene - tanker after tanker. Locations in and around Nasik were safe heaven for the fuel mafia operations.
CNN-IBN investigations revealed that many of the private fuel tankers were designed for oil pilferage.
Each normal truck, with a capacity of 12 kilolitres, usually has three compartments of 4 kilolitres each.
The specifically designed tankers have a hidden compartment with a capacity of another 50 to 100 litres inside one of the compartments
When the trucks filled the fuel, the lid of the hidden compartment remained closed.
The truck then went to a retail outlet where the dealers checked the quality and quantity of the fuel using dips.
When the checks got over, the driver pulled the lid of the hidden compartment using a cable that he can access through a lever in his cabin.
The hidden chamber got filled even as the fuel was being emptied out at the retail outlet.
Fuel mafia gangs such as that of Popat, the main accused in Sonawane murder case, had a tie up with transporters and security guards posted at the oil companies. Once the tankers leave with fuel, a racketeer's network was alerted. Instead of heading directly for the consumer, the tankers are driven to the transfer points, some of them on the Nasik-Mumbai highway.
With petrol prices moving up and kerosene prices unchanged, the incentive to adulterate is high. In 2005 the illegal market was pegged at Rs 10,000 crore and it was only getting bigger.
Sonawane's death should be the wake up call for the government and oil companies to act and stop the adulteration and pilferage.
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