The 10 petrol bunks, which were found possessing tampered fuel dispensing machines during raids recently conducted by the Cyberabad police, must have fraudulently gained over Rs. 20 crore from customers in the past one year, say investigators.
The five-member gang caught by the Special Operations Team (SOT) of Cyberabad told interrogators that they arranged chips in the fuel dispensing machines of these 10 filling stations so that fuel — diesel or petrol — is delivered in lesser quantity.
“The chips can be arranged in such a way that out of every 100 litres of petrol or diesel filled, three to five litres is less. That means for 1,000 litres of petrol purchased from one of these bunks, the customers would have lost 30 litres to 50 litres of petrol,” say the police officials.
Based on the inputs given by the accused, the SOT actually raided 12 petrol bunks on the outskirts and found that fuel dispensing machines in 10 of them were installed with chips supplied by the gang. Majority of these filling stations were located along highways and record huge volume of sales.
A minimum of 1,000 litres of petrol and 1,000 litres of diesel is sold at each of these bunks daily. If the chip is arranged to deliver 40 litres of petrol short of 1,000 litres sold, its owner would pocket nearly Rs. 3,200 each day. It translates to Rs. 2,400 a day for same quantity of diesel. Both put together, the bunk management is making Rs. 5,600 a day.
“That comes to a whopping Rs. 2 crore a year by one bunk and the 10 bunks must have made over Rs. 20 crore in the past one year illegally,” said SOT Officer on Special Duty K. Goverdhan Reddy. Actually, customers at these filling stations must have lost much more as some of them were registering sale of diesel and petrol of over 10,000 litres each day, the officer said.
More startling was the admission of the gang that they had supplied chips to nearly 100 petrol bunks in different parts of the State, including the capital.
