The District and Additional Sessions Court, Malegaon. (Pic: The Voice of Malegaon)
An Additional Sessions Court here on Saturday sent Mohd Aabid, who has been accused of stealing electricity worth Rs 1,33,282 by installing a clone meter at his powerloom unit, to fourteen days in Magisterial Custody Remand (MCR). He was arrested a day earlier.
The accused has also been slapped with a charge that reads ‘causing monetary loss to the Malegaon Power Supply Ltd’, a Distributor Franchisee handling supply of electricity and maintenance of network since April 01, 2020.
Aabid has been a co-accused in the First Information Report (FIR) 0147/2023 along with two other accused Sakeena Abdul Rauf and Firoj Akhtar Haji Abdul Lateef filed with the Pawarwadi Police. The trials of all the three accused are being conducted at an Additional Sessions Court here.
Modus operandi
As per the FIR, Aabid used two meters at his powerloom unit, one the original one and the other a fake (duplicate) or clone one. Every month just days before collection of meter reading, he would allegedly install the original meter supplied by the MahaVitaran and when the meter reading collection was over, he would replace the original meter with the clone one.
Another accused Sakeena, as per the FIR, is the owner of the powerloom unit Aabid had been running. In a separate incident of power theft, accused Firoj Akhtar Haji Abdul Lateef allegedly stole power worth Rs 1,24,788 by installing a fake or duplicate meter at his powerloom unit.
The trio is facing charges under Sections 420, 468, 471, 406, and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as Sections 135 and 138 of the Indian Electricity Act, 2003. As has been alleged, there was power theft of Rs 2,58,070 in both the cases.
What MPSL says
A senior MPSL official said in Malegaon around 40% of power supplied is stolen and a big chunk of this theft is shared by plastic factories and by consumers indulging in meter tampering.
He added the private electricity distributor has already filed more than 300 FIRs since it took over the supply and maintenance operations in April 2020. He added the company has identified consumers involved in power thefts and alerted them that strict action will be taken against such consumers.
