Hyderabad: Ex-petty officer of Navy, 4 others arrested

Abdullahpurmet: The Special Operations Team (SOT) of Rachakonda, along with the Abdullahpurmet police, on Wednesday arrested five persons for indulging in oil pilferage scam and seized a diesel tanker with 15,000 liters, Rs 23,000 and six mobile phones from them.

The accused were identified as Nadendla Koteshwar Rao, Botha Venu Madhava Rao, A Sudhakar Reddy, Md Owais and K Venkataiah, while three others are absconding.

Mahesh Bhagwat, Rachakonda Police Commissioner, said, "The main accused Koteshwar Rao, a native of Prakasam district, retired from Indian Navy in 2009, but migrated to the city eight years back. Since then he was doing various businesses.

He became a GHMC contractor." While taking GHMC contracts, he came across one Ayub Ali Baig (absconding), a fuel contractor of GHMC (filling diesel in trucks). As Rao realised that he could make a lot of money by pilfering fuel, he colluded with Ayub and took sub-contracts from him for filling fuel from three petrol pumps at Kavadiguda, Khairatabad and Malakpet, which are leased out by the civic body," stated the officer.

"The accused used to collect fuel from IOCL in Cherlapally in a tanker of 20,000 liters and empty it in the three pumps. But he emptied only 5,000 litres and sold 15,000 litres illegally to the other accused," he added. As the SOT got a tip-off about the dealings, the police laid a trap at Abdullahpurmet and nabbed the accused, as they were traveling to deliver the stolen fuel. All were booked under Section 409, 420 of IPC and sent to judicial custody.