Mastermind of petrol scam held

Finally, the Thane police has arrested the mastermind of the petrol scam who is an ITI graduate. The seeds of the scam might be international, said the police. The accused will be in the police custody till July 25 as per the court order.

The Thane police along with four other departments raided the petrol pumps in the whole of Maharashtra and till date there have been raids on 96 pumps in various districts of Maharashtra, the police said.

“Prakash Nulkar is an ITI graduate and is an ex-employee of Midco ( a company that trades in engineering and manufacturing fuel dispensing system). There are three teams involved in the scam, working in various states,” said Parambir Singh, commissioner of police, Thane.

Senior police inspector of branch unit 1 received information that Vivek Shetye (one of the masterminds arrested by UP polic) had distributed tampered ICs (integrated circuits) to various states through his agents.

Thane police along with four other units raided 96 petrol pumps from 16 districts of Maharashtra. Thane district is at the top rank where 28 fuel pumps were found tampered. Pune and Nashik are at second rank. 12 petrol pumps were tampered here. They were followed by Nagpur (5), Ratnagiri (2),Aurangabad (6), Satara (1), Sangli (1), Jalgaon (2), Chandraqpur (2), Dhule (3), Yavatmal (2) and Mumbai (2).

The police has arrested 23 accused in these cases from all over Maharashtra. Petrol pumps of these fuel companies (IOCL-48, HPCL32, BPCL-08, and Issar-04) were found to be tampered. The modus operandi was to modify the IC chip that was made by these technically sound cheaters. “These chips are imported from China and the mastermind Nulkar might have exported these modified chips to countries like China, Abu Dhabi and South Africa. We are investigating the matter further as we have almost all the accused arrested. There are few whom we have declared as absconding,” the CP added further.

These arrested accused are all technically well-oriented and the petrol pump owners used to earn huge profit through this technique. When the raids were on , some petrol pump owners themselves changed their settings as per the rule. The machines that have been raided are sealed,” said the police.

The arrested accused Vivek Shetye and his team members, with the help of petrol pump owners tampered pulser cards in MIDCO and Gilburco.