Vadodara’s Crime Prevention Branch (PCB) on Saturday raided a transport company in the Ranoli neighborhood on the outskirts of the city and arrested two of the five people accused of alleged theft of crude oil from the pipeline of large PSUs. .

The gang allegedly drilled oil power block pipelines and installed valves to fill a custom dump truck fitted with a tank. Among the two people arrested on Saturday is the owner of the transport company where the gang filled other tankers with the stolen crude oil.

The PCB had been informed that one of the wanted defendants had recently been involved in the siphoning of oil by puncturing the pipelines of oil PSUs located in the Vadodara countryside. They would then take the containers to the compound of a transport company owned by Shashi Yadav and fill the crude oil into branded tankers using an electric motor and sell them.

“Our team was informed that the filling of the tankers was in progress in the enclosure of the transport company and we therefore made a descent on the spot. The accused had pierced the ONGC main pipeline which runs from Ankleshwar to the Koyali terminal in Vadodara. The breach has been identified between Raypura and Darapura. The accused had a total of 20,000 liters of crude oil worth Rs 6 lakh at the time of the raid, ”PCB officials said in a statement.

Police said the gang installed a tank truck inside the body of a dump truck and installed valves and pipes under the truck to fill the container from the perforated pipes. The teams also installed valves where the pipes had been punctured.

The arrested accused was identified as Hanuman Vanzara, originally from Ajmer in Rajasthan and working for the co-accused Shashikant Yadav’s transport company. Police said three other defendants wanted in the case.