Hyderabad: Petrol bunks fill less, to be sealed

Hyderabad: Many petrol bunk owners in Greater Hyderabad are tampering with the display metres of the pumps and shortchanging customers. By dispensing around 10 ml less fuel per litre, they have been making quite a lot in illegal profits.

The manipulation of the pumps was detected by the Legal Metrology department. A senior official from the department said, “The team inspected 28 petrol pumps in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts, of which eight were resorting to this fraud. This was identified when we inspected five litres of petrol and the shortfall was of 30 ml, which means for every five litres delivered from these bunks, 30 ml was less. These bunks installed digital tampering software chips. They were fined compound fees ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 and have been banned from operating unless they set up error-free metre.”

“Any petrol bunk found with shortfalls in future will be seized and the licence will be canceled. The oil companies and officials concerned are not taking any action. Tampering should be considered as cheating and managements indulging in such offenses need to be punished as per law,” added the official.

Legal Metrology officials said that for every 100 litres, petrol pumps have been saving seven to eight litres.

For almost six months, these pumps have been saving a minimum of 90 litres per day. This way these pumps might have made more than Rs 15,000 illegally per day for the past several months, said the official, adding that each pump would have fleeced by lakhs in the last few months.