LPG black market: Police recover 500 cylinders, arrest 11
While the Government assured Delhi that the West Asia crisis would not disrupt cooking gas supplies, a parallel economy was quietly flourishing in rented godowns, residential homes, and TATA Ace vans navigating industrial back lanes.
Over the past ten days, Delhi Police has made a series of raids across the Capital, recovering nearly 500 LPG cylinders from illegal hoarders and black marketeers who had turned a public crisis into private profit.
The numbers tell a story of organised exploitation. Six separate operations in Sangam Vihar, Chhawla, Dabri, Rohini, Palam Village, and Bawana have led to eleven arrests and the seizure of cylinders from HP Gas, Bharat Gas, Indane, and Go Gas. The accused range from registered delivery agents who simply never delivered to the anti-auto shopkeepers charging Rs 200 per kilogram for gas that customers were struggling to find through legitimate channels.
The most troubling pattern to emerge from the raids is the role of authorised delivery personnel. In Sangam Vihar, the Crime Branch’s Anti-Narcotics Task Force raided three rented godowns in L Block on March 25 and recovered 183 Indane cylinders: 154 of them filled.
All four accused, Sher Singh, Suraj Parihar, Raghu Raj Singh, and Jitender Sharma, were registered delivery agents of an authorised Indane agency based in Sheikh Sarai.
Their method was systematic: they collected cylinders from the agency, skipped deliveries, stockpiled the surplus, extracted one to two kilograms of gas from each filled cylinder using iron pipes and pokers, transferred it into empty cylinders, and sold both in the open market at inflated rates.
“The instruments used in illegal refilling included iron pokers, iron pipes, and weighing scales,” said DCP Rahool Alwal, heading the Anti-Narcotics Task Force (ANTF). “The accused carried out the refilling in a highly cautious manner.”
Two days later, on March 27, in Rohini, the Crime Branch recovered 50 Indane cylinders, 29 of which were filled, from a father-son duo operating out of Sukhbir Nagar. Kunwar Pal, 55, was himself an authorised delivery man for an Indane agency. He had simply been diverting cylinders from his daily rounds, storing them at home, and selling them at a premium with his son, Pankaj, 21. A TATA Ace vehicle and a weighing machine were also seized.
Not all the accused were insiders. In Chhawla, on March 24, a joint team of Anti-Auto Theft Squad (AATS), Dwarka, and Chhawla police station raided a residential house on Paprawat Road and found 65 cylinders stored illegally by Ashok Kumar, 52, originally from Etawah, UP. He had a gas transfer machine and a weighing scale. DCP Kushal Pal Singh, Dwarka District, confirmed the accused was selling cylinders to caterers and local residents at above-market prices.
In Dabri’s Seetapuri area, the Crime Branch caught Mohan Lal Garg, 61, running an illegal refilling operation from his shop on April 1. He was charging Rs 200 per kilogram. “A dedicated team was constituted to nab hoarders in view of the ongoing apprehension regarding the LPG shortage,” said DCP Harsh Indora, Crime Branch, Delhi.
At Palam Village on March 28, three men, a driver, a delivery boy, and an assistant delivery boy, were caught transferring gas between cylinders at a vacant plot rented specifically for the purpose. The operation was linked to Blue Flame Gas Service, Janakpuri. SDM Dwarka and officials from BPCL and the Food Safety Department inspected the site and confirmed the illegal activity. Forty-five Bharat Gas cylinders were seized.
The most recent bust came on Thursday at Bawana’s DSIIDC industrial sector. Anil Kalita, 50, was stopped in a TATA Ace with 27 cylinders. He then disclosed two additional storage rooms where 48 more were found stacked without safety measures, without documents, and without any authorisation.
