Two men who used to pose as BSES officials to cheat and subsequently extort money from unsuspecting electricity consumers were nabbed in a joint operation of the Delhi Police and officials of the BSES Vigilance Department in South Delhi.
A senior BSES official said the prime accused, one Rahul alias Brijesh Sharma, led the gang.
“They used to scare gullible well-off residents of posh neighbourhoods by telling them that their electricity meters were tampered, amounted to power theft and attracted heavy penalty and imprisonment. Later, they used to ‘settle’ the case for a ‘sum’,” said a BSES official.
Recently, the official said, the discom had received a tip-off about the gang from a resident of R.K. Puram. The same gang, the BSES had recently learnt, was now trying to extort money using a similar modus operandi from a resident of Sant Nagar near Nehru Place.
Meanwhile, the team ran Rahul Sharma’s mobile number against the consumer database to look for a possible match. The number was found to belong to one Sant Ram Sharma, a resident of Sangam Vihar.
“A discreet watch was kept at the Sangam Vihar residence of Sant Ram for several days and evidence including photographs was collected. This was handed over to officials of the R.K. Puram police station which deputed a police personnel to accompany the BSES’ vigilance team to the premise and arrested Sharma,” the BSES official said.
On interrogation by the police, it is understood, Sharma revealed that his real name was Brijesh and confessed to the crime. He also gave details about his main accomplice, one Rajesh, who was subsequently arrested from Tigri village by the Delhi Police.
Simultaneously, the discom checked the electricity consumption pattern at Sharma’s Sangam Vihar residence. “He was stealing electricity to the tune of 15 kW by ingeniously concealing a cable in the wall. He has been booked under Section 135 of the Electricity Act, 2003, at the Sangam Vihar police station and was subsequently remanded to 14 days’ in judicial custody by a city court,” the BSES official added.
