Fuelling organised crime

Mafia tale:

As you drive from Nashik towards Manmad, you will be struck by the acres of vineyards on both sides of the highway. The region is known for its superior quality of grapes and wineries, which export world class wines and champagnes. Near Manmad, a major junction on the Mumbai-Kolkata trunk railway line, you suddenly realise that you are in India's onion country. Tractors loaded with onions compete with oil tankers.

In nearby Chandwad, Nashik’s additional collector Yashwant Sonawane halted briefly to talk to onion growers about their problems before proceeding to Nandgaon for a meeting with the tahsildar there. While passing Panewadi, which has huge oil installations and filling stations of Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Sonawane asked his driver to pull over the jeep he was travelling in alongside Sagar Dhaba behind whose walls two oil tankers were parked. He sensed some suspicious activity and tip-toed behind the dhaba where he found four to five men removing kerosene and diesel from the parked tankers.

Shocked to see Sonawane, the men touched his feet, begging forgiveness. The officer asked his personal assistant Raju Kale to call up the Nandgaon tahsildar and the food supply inspector so they could rush to Panewadi. As he pulled out his cellphone to video-record the pilferage, out rushed Popat Shinde, the dhaba owner, along with son Kunal. A couple of other men rode in on a motorbike. After an altercation, Kunal attacked Sonawane with an iron rod. As he fell, Popat seized a bucket-full of kerosene, emptied it on Sonawane, lit a match stick and flung it at the man writhing on the dirt road. In the frenzy, some of the kerosene fell on Popat. Afire, Sonawane grabbed him in bear hug, causing burns on Popat. His henchmen used sand and clothes to douse the fire on him and took him to the Manmad civil hospital, but left Sonwane dying. Fearing they too would be roasted by the blood-thirsty gang, the two eyewitness to the grisly murder -- Kale and Sonawane’s driver Kailash Gavli -- fled the scene.

The clandestine trade

The gruesome killing has taken the lid off a clandestine, illegal trade in oil and an adulteration racket that has been on since 1998 when BPCL laid its pipeline around Panewadi which subsequently emerged as major operations centre for all oil marketing companies. “See the tank buried in the ground,” Narayan Pawar, a Panewadi resident who drives oil tankers, said, pointing to the rusting container. “They (the mafia) fill it up with the fuel oil they empty from tankers,” Pawar said, swearing that he was not part of the racket.

“Usually, when a diesel-laden tanker with a 12,000-litre capacity leaves the Indian Oil or BPCL filling station, it stops at a roadside dhaba. That is when gangs in twos and threes swoop down on it. They usually possess a duplicate key to the locked lid and expertly replace the seal with a new one, each time they target a tanker,” Pawar revealed at Kaveri dhaba.

According to Pawar, in a span of two to three hours as much as 300 litres of diesel is pilfered. The stolen diesel is stored in numerous strategically buried tanks on the Nashik-Dhule highway. In local parlance, the operation is called ‘palati maar’ -- remove petrol or diesel and reverse it with kerosene. Tankers carrying kerosene are likewise broken open and some their contents removed deftly. “The racketeers use some chemical which removes the kerosene strong odour and colour. It then becomes indistinguishable from diesel,” Pawar said.

Of the approximately 300 tankers that leave Panewadi’s filling stations, about 30 are targeted -- a measure of the adroit mafia’s operations and the extent and magnitude of the problem. The tanker from which kerosene was being removed behind Popat’s dhaba belonged to an Aurangabad dealer. Popat’s business had grown to the extent that he owned two tankers which were routinely used for oil pilferage.

Clearly, there is a nexus at work. “Most policemen, revenue officers and food and civil supplies inspectors are aware that the dhabas are prime locations for pilferage and subsequent adulteration,” a station incharge of one of the oil marketing companies told Deccan Herald. This has been going on for years, but no one is willing to take action since illegal trade in oil is just apt for greasing the palms of officials. And the chain goes upward,” he said requesting anonymity. It is alleged that Sonawane’s driver and PA received Rs 2,000 each as bribe from Popat.

According to sources in the oil companies, places like Nandgaon, Chandwad, Malegaon, Dhule, Pachora, Igarpuri and Erandole are the centres of the illegal trade. By one estimate, a dozen gangs, each comprising 10-15 persons, operate along the stretch.

Each gang member has a specialised task, which could be attending to a tanker, removing the fuel, replacing it with kerosene, breaking and making a new seal. A local politician who did not wish to be named said that an individual gang member is paid about Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000. Some of them network with distributors in Ahmednagar, Dhule, Aurangabad and Malegaon.

A petrol pump owner on the highway near Nashik said he didn’t know whether the diesel brought in tankers is adulterated or not. “Sometimes, the tanker owners offer selling the entire tanker for the half the price. We cannot resist the temptation to make a neat profit,” he said. The buried tanks containing stolen diesel is moved on trucks and sold to petrol pump owners or to unauthorised retailers in villagers at discounts which could often be Rs 20 per litre. Both the racketeers and the sellers make make nearly 100 per cent profit. The pilfered fuel is sold at the going rate of Rs 41.30.

Girish Shah, a ration shop owner in Manmad, said the tankers which transport kerosene to his establishment contain less than the usual quantity. "I have barrels of 250 litres, and each is five-six litres short of kerosene. We know who steals the kerosene in between," he said.

This situation on the ground is inextricably linked to the subsidy on kerosene. “Rationed kerosene is to be sold at Rs 12.50 per litre and, in villages, we have to sell it anyone who demands it. If a dhaba owner approaches us we sell him kerosene at Rs 25 to a litre.

Only a small quantity of kerosene is sold at the subsidised price; the rest goes into the black market,” Shah admitted.

It is not that the adulterers are never booked by the police. Popat Shinde was booked at least six times under Essential Commodities Act and was also externed from Manmad in 2006, but these action failed to deter him or other racketeers. The arrest of 11 of the racketeers for Sonawane’s murder will be a sharp warning for the mafia which is now wounded, but not fatally.