Jet fuel stolen & sold as turpentine, police seize 72,000 litres worth Rs 1.6 crore from Delhi godown

According to Crime Branch estimates, Yadav allegedly diverted about 1.5 lakh litres of ATF every month, on an average, from an HPCL depot at Asoda in Haryana’s Bahadurgarh — which points to a staggering projection of almost 54 lakh litres of jet fuel since the racket started operating.

Among the others arrested Sunday was Rajkumar Chaudhary (53) who, the police said, was allegedly a major purchaser of the stolen ATF who resold it in the open market after misrepresenting it as Mineral Turpentine Oil (MTO), “which is commonly used in the ink and paint industry”.

The others arrested include Ashpal Singh Bhullar (53), a transporter operating multiple trucks including three seized by the police Sunday; drivers Ram Bharose Yadav (44), Anjay Roy (41) and Subodh Kumar Yadav (32); and the helpers, both named Parveen Kumar Yadav, aged 25 and 19, respectively.

The breakthrough came after surveillance and intelligence inputs gathered by the Delhi Police’s Inter-State Cell (ISC) team led by Inspector Mahipal Singh and supervised by ACP Ramesh Chander Lamba. On Sunday, based on a tip-off received by Head Constable Sunil, the team conducted a targeted raid at a nondescript godown in Mundka, said police.

According to the police, the raid team came across ATF being siphoned into barrels from three oil tankers, each with a capacity of 24,000 litres. Two pickup trucks that were assigned to further distribute the illicit fuel down the supply chain were also seized, the police said. The police estimate that around 5,000 litres of ATF were stolen every day from the HPCL depot. “The truck drivers manipulated the delivery logs using forged dip rods, so no one would notice that the tankers had less fuel than when it left for delivery,” said an officer linked to the investigation.

Yadav and his associates would cover their tracks well, the police said. “The ATF was originally loaded at HPCL Asoda Depot, Bahadurgarh, for delivery to Indira Gandhi International Airport,” said DCP (Crime Branch) Aditya Gautam.

“The accused drivers, in collusion with the transporter and godown operator, manipulated the GPS tracking system and diverted the tankers to the Mundka godown. The tanker locks, secured with keys exclusive to the destination depot, were bypassed using duplicate keys. Forged dip rods were used to simulate legitimate delivery measurements. The siphoned ATF was then sold in the open market under the guise of Mineral Turpentine Oil,” Gautam said.

The godown in Mundka was located on the route from Asoda to the airport, which meant that slight detours wouldn’t raise suspicions, said police.

Furthermore, police said, Yadav got duplicate keys made to bypass the locking mechanism on the tankers, despite only the destination depot having the keys to unlock the chambers to access the fuel. Yadav would buy the ATF from the tanker drivers at Rs 30 per litre and then sell it to purchasers at Rs 50 per litre, they said.

MTO is used as a paint and varnish thinner, and can be substituted with kerosene. ATF is primarily derived from crude oil and is a specialised, more refined kerosene-based fuel.

When contacted for details on market prices, Jignesh Mehta, managing director of Mehta Petro-Refineries Ltd, said MTO approximately costs Rs 66 per litre, making Yadav’s price in the black market “a steal for an extremely high-valued product”.