A businessman hailing from Panvel in Mumbai was nabbed for stealing power worth Rs 1.15 crore. Notably, this comes a week after the businessman was fined for power theft worth Rs 1.3 crore.
As per the investigation carried out by the police the accused, Jiyauddin Patel who runs a stone crushing enterprise, had allegedly tampered with the electrical energy meter to point out decreased readings.
After detecting the theft at the accused’s stone crushing unit, MSEDCL carried out a raid at his second unit too.
As of now, the police said that a second FIR has been registered against the businessman and his two associates at Panvel metropolis police station. Officers however assured that they will carry on their drive against irregularities in meter readings throughout MMR.
Earlier this year, authorities of power utilities in Haryana had detected almost 2,500 cases of electricity theft while conducting raids at industries and commercial establishments in five towns and cities of the state.
Though routine raids were conducted to detect cases of electricity theft, this particular raid was planned by Power Minister Ranjit Chautala upon getting feedback that industries and big commercial establishments are big contributors to electricity theft. To send across the message that “big players won’t be spared”, raids were planned and conducted in a very coordinated way to detect theft in big industries. Haryana Power Minister Ranjit Chautala referred to the move as “unprecedented in the history of the state”.
Earlier, in a raid conducted during a night in 2020, nine officers including three chief engineers and five superintending engineers of the electricity department were caught stealing electricity by kundi connections. A penalty of Rs 7 lakh was imposed on them.
