Petrol pumps easy prey
2 min readPatna: Criminals looted around Rs 18 lakh from petrol pump owners and employees in different parts of the state in the past 24 hours.
In the first incident, two armed criminals on a motorcycle robbed Rs 10 lakh from Pramod Singh, the owner of a petrol pump located on National Highway-30 under Dinara police station in Rohtas, and fired at him when he resisted.
The bullet hit a 14-year-old schoolgirl identified as Palak Kumari in her leg. She has been admitted to a primary health centre at Dinara. She was returning home after finishing her classes at Baldev High School in the area.
Dinara station house officer (SHO) Satish Kumar Singh said: “The incident occurred around noon when the petrol pump owner was carrying the cash to deposit it in a bank. Raids are being conducted in the area to nab the people involved in it.”
The second attack too was carried out around noon at Semra under Sahebganj police station in Muzaffarpur. Three motorcycle-borne criminals looted Rs 3.88 lakh from an employee of Shri Sai Kisan Kendra Petrol Pump.
“The employee was carrying the cash to deposit it at the Canara Bank branch at Rajwara in the area. An FIR has been lodged. We are conducting raids to trace the criminals and we are carrying out scientific investigations to arrest them,” a police officer said.
Another incident occurred at a petrol pump at Kusheshwar Sthan in Darbhanga late Sunday night.
Armed criminals, again on a motorcycle, looted Rs 4.5 lakh from the owner of the petrol pump at gunpoint and fled.
Bihar Petroleum Dealers’ Association (BPDA) expressed worry over the trend and said fuel pumps are becoming soft targets of criminals despite numerous assurances by the state government about strengthening the law-and-order situation.
“The danger on us has increased. We had met chief minister Nitish Kumar and home department principal secretary Amir Subhani six months ago after several petrol pumps in Vaishali and other places were robbed. They had assured us that security at district level will be tightened but nothing happened,” BPDA president P.K. Singh said.
Singh added that Mondays were sensitive as cash gets accumulated at petrol pumps over the weekend. He said efforts were on to educate petrol pump owners not to carry so much cash with them.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
