Hyderabad: The Cyberabad police has arrested eight people for installing chips in fuel stations and delivering less petrol than what was actually displayed on the filling machine. The accused, which include station employees, committed the crime across Andhra Pradesh Telangana, and Karnataka, with petrol bunk owners scamming the public off of crores of rupees.
The accused have been identified as Md. Faizul Bari, K. Sandeep, Md. Aslam, Kalimera Narsinga Rao, V. Vamshidhar Reddy, Rangu Ramesh (an IOC pump manager at Mechal), B. Maheshwar Rao (supervisor at a filling station) and Nagandla Venkatesh (took two stations on lease). After their arrest, the police seized several incriminating materials, including micro controllers, remote chips, and other things used to commit the fraud.
According to the Cyberabad police, Bari, Aslam and Narsinga Rao previously worked as petrol bunk mechanics for a long time at various places and learned the mechanism of filling stations. In fact, Bari and Sandeep were previously involved in a petrol bunk cheating case registered with the Kukatpally police station as well.
After learning how to manipulate the mechanism, the accused had installed manipulated chips in fuel dispensing machines which delivered less fuel than the actual display on board/metre. Bari had purchased the manipulated software from one Jayesh, a resident of Surat in Gujarat, and started programming the chips.
Another of the accused then copied the same chip at one petrol bunk and like that, he continued to install the same in different petrol pumps in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh. They would charge Rs 1 or 2 lakh per chip installation from the petrol bunk owners.
The above operation was conducted under the supervision of G. Sandeep, deputy commissioner of police, Special Operations Team, Cyberabad police.