By Dheeraj Fartode Imagine a police officer uploads an FIR and within seconds, an AI assistant begins planning the investigation. It write official letters, scan bank data and spot suspicious transactions. It sounds like science fiction - but it’s now reality in Maharashtra. The state police have started using Crime-OS, a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool developed under the MARVEL project (Maharashtra Research and Vigilance for Enhanced Law Enforcement). This tool, built in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Nagpur, works like the co-pilot feature in Microsoft Office - but to solve crimes. It helps police save valuable time and reduces the heavy workload of investigations. Assistant Superitendent of Police (ASP) Deepak Agrawal explained that police investigations usually take a lot of time and effort. Crime-OS is designed to ease that burden. “For example, if a fraud case FIR is uploaded, the tool automatically picks out important information. It t...
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 !
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