Oil theft gang busted in Angul, 12 arrested

ANGUL: A well knit inter-state gang involved in stealing oil from pipeline of IOCL was busted by police at Kanjara near Jarapara, here on Monday. As many 12 members of the gang including the owner of a petrol pump were arrested and 49,000 litre of oil seized from them.

Speaking to media persons, Angul SP Brijesh Rai said the leader of the gang, Vineet Gupta, is a diploma engineer and a resident of Mathura. Vineet, who was working in a private company, has the knowledge of stealing oil from the pipeline.

Vineet along with his accomplice Popu from Uttar Pradesh had come to Odisha last year and knew about the IOCL pipeline from Paradip to Jharsuguda. They formed the gang by roping in Ranjan Singh, Subrat Dash and Kamakhya Prasad of Jarada village, Karan Sharma of Delhi, Sunil from Uttar Pradesh, Muna Dwibedi of Jajpur, Dhananjaya Dwivedi of Sukinda, GS Prustry of Cuttack, Madan Swain of Niali.

They started hatching the plan to steal oil in November last year and carried it out on February 12. They sold the stolen oil to the petrol pump owner in Talcher. Police have also seized a oil tanker, one Innova, one Scorpio, one Indica and `4.5 lakh from the accused. All the arrested were forwarded to court, the SP said.