Power plant executive engineer flees with diamond-like rock found in coal rack in UP, FIR lodged

JHANSI: “Sisyphus would be an ideal man if, instead of a regular stone, he rolled a diamond,” Macedonian aphorist Ljupka Cvetanova had said.

In one such incident, the morality of an executive engineer and another employee of a thermal power plant in Jhansi was put to test under the weight of a diamond-like rock, and voila, the cookie crumbled!
It began with the workers at the Parichha Thermal Power Plant (PTPP) engaged in quality testing a large heap of coal on Monday. The plant, about 25 km from Jhansi on the bank of Betwa river, is owned and operated by Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, which is a state enterprise.
The plant’s chief general manager, Manoj Sachan, said the employees of Quality Council of India (QCI), an outsourced company of GOI, engaged in checking the quality of the coal being shipped inside the plant found a large glass-like rock, weighing about 2 kilograms, from the wagon of a freshly arrived coal rake from Jharkhand on Monday.
Expectedly, the discovery led to total chaos as the workers broke the rock and decamped with whatever pieces they could gather.
A few of them made the video of the melee and made it viral.
On being informed, the site in-charge arrived at the scene and took the remaining rock with him to his home to avoid any conflict.
But the word had spread, and the lure of lucre had unleashed the worst of mankind.
In the evening, an executive engineer of the thermal plant, Bhupendra Singh, along with Amit Singh, who works with QCI, and a few more men reached the house of the site incharge impersonating as vigilance sleuths, took away the stone from him and absconded.
The incident came to light on Thursday, after which a case was lodged against the duo at Jhansi’s Baragaon police station under IPC’s section 379 (theft).
According to Baragaon SHO Vinay Diwakar, the police have rounded up both the accused who are being interrogated.
The last nail driven into the story proved to it to be a classic case of all-was-lost-for-a-horseshoe-nail.
According to plant’s chief general manager Manoj Sachan, the initial testing rules out the rock to be a diamond.
“It is two carats and brittle, which is not the quality of a diamond. A diamond is very hard in nature and starts with ten carats. It seems to be rock. But we will get it further tested at a government certified lab,” he said.