Police: IOC fire could be sabotage

Jaipur Inspector General of Police B L Soni on Saturday said they had not ruled out sabotage as one of the causes of the IOC inferno that began on October 29. “This same IOC depot is involved in an oil pilferage case being investigated by the CBI. Arson could have been the result of perpetrators trying to cover their tracks and ensure the fuel shortage in the IOC depot went unnoticed,” he said.

Soni added that the police,in their investigation so far,had clearly determined that the machinery at the IOC depot had not been handled according to IOC’s standard operating procedure (SOP).

Senior police officers said that arson was a possibility since the CBI investigation could unearth the involvement of senior IOC officials in their pilferage case. According to the Jaipur CBI spokesperson,Alok Gupta,a team of CBI sleuths arrested seven persons in August for fuel pilferage.

“The accused include two IOC supervisors and we have in a month alone confiscated 180 KL of fuel. We believe that such a huge quantity of fuel could not have been pilfered without anybody noticing,” Gupta said.

Jaipur police officers over the last two days have scrutinised the machinery at the nearby Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) to make a comparison with the gutted IOC depot.

Soni said,“The depots are identical including the fuel containers and we found that the valves in the IOC container,which are connected to the pipeline,were not operated according to IOC SOP.” He added that this mishandling of the valve lead to the initial leak,which was not contained and developed into a much larger outflow of petrol.

“We are probing the role of higher officials,” CBI’s Gupta said. Incidentally,Gupta stated that the accused in the pilferage scam used the HPCL depot.

“The HPCL depot was decommissioned on August 22 and the accused would transfer fuel from the IOC depot to the HPCL containers and re-route the fuel at their convenience,” Gupta said.

He added that the CBI entered the picture after a tip that HPCL authorities had uncovered the operation and were trying hush it up.

Senior police officers stated that following a preliminary investigation,they had determined that the first sign of leakage was reported between 5.15 and 5.30 pm,but went unreported.

An officer on grounds of anonymity said,“It is mandatory for all leaks to be reported immediately,but this one was not taken seriously it seems. By around 6.30 pm the leak was bigger and a vapour cloud of fuel had spread around the depot,which eventually exploded.”

The only eyewitness,IOC’s technical officer Ashok Gupta is recovering at a hospital in Jaipur and was the only survivor amongst IOC employees.

The police stated that he was in charge of all other technicians on the night of the incident and that they were presently questioning him,but his health has been given a priority for now.