The Hindu : New Delhi News : Crackdown on power thieves

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 05, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Crackdown on power thieves

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: In raids over the week, North Delhi Power Limited has cracked down on large-scale power theft totalling 825 KW and raised a penalty of Rs. 1.65 crores against the accused.

In one of the biggest residential power thefts, a resident of Flag Staff Road in Civil Lines with a load of 60 KW was allegedly found to have tampered with one phase of his meter while having a three-phase connection and stealing power worth Rs. 5.25 lakhs.

The company said another big offender was an industrial unit in Tri Nagar which had a load of 62 KW but had tampered the seals of the meter. Here the accused was allegedly running four workshops comprising a lathe unit, a grinding unit, an electroplating unit and a moulding unit on the same premises. Found to be running the meter 33 per cent slow, the unit has been penalised Rs. 13.6 lakhs.

During the week, NDPL said it booked a total of 154 power theft cases involving a load of about 825 KW. Of this, 112 were cases of meter tampering (Dishonest Abstraction of Energy) involving a load of 684 KW and a penalty of Rs. 1.10 crores while there were 42 cases of Direct Theft involving a load of 141 KW and penalty of Rs. 55 Lakhs.

The raiding teams also detected about 1,000 illegal tapping points through which about 150 KW of power was being stolen.

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