Dreaded oil mafia arrested by CID

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested a dreaded oil mafia from Kolkata station early on Tuesday morning.

Sources said the accused, Ganesh Jaiswal, is a resident of Behala in South Kolkata and he claimed himself to be a BJP leader.

CID officers had received several complaints of oil pilferage from pipelines connecting different deports of the oil companies from refineries. Investigation revealed that

Ganesh is the kingpin of a racket that had been into the business of oil pilferage and selling below premium than the market price.

Acting on a tip-off, CID officers conducted a raid at Kolkata station and arrested him as soon as he got down from a train. He returned to the city after travelling to different places including Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh.

The investigating officers took the accused to Sankrail in Howrah from where the police seized a truck containing 13 huge drums full of petrol.

According to a CID officer, Ganesh used to steal oil from pipelines through which petrol and diesel is delivered from the refinery at Haldia to the depot of an oil company at Mourigram in Howrah.

They had a system of pumping out oil from the pipelines and it led to a huge loss of the oil companies. After pumping out the fuel from the pipeline, Ganesh used to sell it in the open market at a

lesser price.

Tushar Kanti Sen, president of the West Bengal Petroleum Dealers' Association, said: "We need to pay Rs 8 lakh to buy 12,000 litre of petrol from the oil companies.

"But oil mafias like Ganesh sell the same quantity at around Rs 5 to Rs 6 lakh after stealing it from the pipelines. It had left a bad impact on the entire sector."

The investigating officers are suspecting that the arrest of Ganesh is nothing but just a tip of an iceberg and they have started interrogating him to get names of other "major players" in the racket.

The oil mafias like Ganesh have a wide network mainly in the rural parts of the state where they sell the pilfered oil.