Power discom team held hostage during inspection

POWER OFFICIALS SAID THEY WERE MANHANDLED AND ALLOWED TO GO ONLY AFTER COPS INTERVENED. THEY HAD VISITED THE SURAJPUR VILLAGE ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

GREATER NOIDA: A group of people held a team of four officials from the power distribution company (discom) Noida Power Company Ltd (NPCL) hostage in a Greater Noida village on Wednesday when the team went there to investigate allegations of power theft. The officials claimed they were manhandled and allowed to go only after police intervened.

NPCL executive Ritesh Gupta said in his police complaint that he was part of the team that had visited Lakhnawali village in Surajpur on Wednesday afternoon. “We had received complaints of power theft by some local people. At a house we found they had connected a wire to an electricity pole and drew power without a valid meter,” he said.

Power officials said the house belonged to 50-year-old Rituraj who had been repeatedly caught drawing illegal power for the last several years and was known to create ruckus whenever discom officials inspected his house.

NPCL general manager Subodh Tyagi, who was not part of the team, said that the team decided to collect evidence of the theft. “The team was capturing photos of the illegal connection on their mobile phones when Rituraj, his sons Prince (25) and Pankaj (23) and a relative named Brahmadutt Sharma (35) and some other people reached the spot and detained the team and manhandled them,” he said.

Tyagi said that a sub-inspector and a constable had accompanied the team but were outnumbered. The team was held hostage for about 30 minutes, he said, and additional police arrived from the Surajpur police station to free them.

Ajay Kumar, SHO Surajpur police station, said a case was registered against the four persons named by the team and other unnamed persons under sections 147 (rioting), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 342 (wrongful confinement), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 504 (intentional insult), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, and section 135 of the Electricity Act, 2003. “The suspects are absconding, and we have launched a search to arrest them,” Kumar said.