Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
Published on July 4, 2017
Despite monthly checking of dispensing machines by State-owned oil companies, consumers used to get short changed at fuel outlet is quite a surprising factor. The fraud unearthed shows use of advanced technology to cover-up the tampering and this was not known till date even to best of brains in business. In Uttar Pradesh, the fraudsters were controlling chips (installed in petrol dispensing machines) through remote control. But this was not the case in Maharashtra. Here it was controlled by the codes or nozzle of the dispensing machine,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Thane Police Abhishek Trimukhe.
DCP Trimukhe further informed The Hitavada that when they went deep into investigations were left bewildered as fraudsters had used mind blowing technology to help petrol/diesel pump owners to cheat the consumers. They were setting the quantity of petrol through pressing code in the machine. Every tampered dispensing machine was provided an unique code to activate the control unit chip. There were two methods which are known to police, one by nozzle and another by code.
In code method, the petrol pump worker press the unique code (given by the racketeers) by using the buttons (visible on petrol dispensing machine) and card gets activated. They set limit of fuel (petrol/diesel) to be delivered to customer per litre. It means that if they set a 100 ml quantity then the customer will get only 900 ml petrol but machine will reflect dispensing of one litre petrol.
In the ‘nozzle’ method, command was set by dispensing petrol of a specific quantity, means it was automatic set-up. If the pump workers dispense just 50 ml petrol and switched off the machine then the control unit start dispensing only 950 ml petrol after pressing button of one litre. “They were setting the command in the morning hours and duping the customers,” said DCP Trimukhe.
Another police officer informed that when officials of State-owned oil companies came to check the machines, the command were set off by switching it off and same could be reactivated by switched on the power supply to the petrol dispensing machines.
As per the DCP Trimukhe, the investigation revealed that the rackets had distributed the regions of the State among themselves and only one person was tampering the machines in one region. For example, one Clifford Thomas was tampering the machine only in Vidarbha region.
“The racket was charging just Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 to tamper the fuel dispensing machine. However, the petrol pump owner were securing profit of more than Rs five lakh every month,” the officer said.
The racket was operating in the State since last five years and they have tampered hundreds of petrol pumps. The Thane police have constituted 10 special teams to conduct raids across the State, he said.
The Thane police have raided four petrol pumps so far in city and district and many other fuel pumps are on their radar.
Nice post !
ReplyDelete