Patna, April 5: The special task force of Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) has detected electricity theft of around Rs 7.25 crore across the state between January and March this year. Of this, cases of power pilferage account for around Rs 6 crore in Patna alone.

“The task force has inspected or raided 208 premises, including few industrial consumers from January to March 31. Of this, FIRs have been lodged in 64 cases of hooking or meter tampering. Four persons have been arrested in this connection,” said Pesu (West) superintending engineer Rajeev Amit, who heads the special task force.

There were 89 cases of load violation, which meant people were consuming power beyond their permissible limit, he said, adding that no irregularity could be found in 55 cases.

“It is a continuous process which works throughout the year whenever we receive complaints of electricity theft. The task force team raids the premises of errant consumers and imposes fine and arrests them,” Amit said.

Asked whether the raids would pick pace in days to come considering the big cases of electricity theft recently, Amit said: “Certainly, we will intensify the drive to prevent people from resorting to illegal hooking or catch them raid-handed. We will inspect all high tension consumers in a phase-wise manner.”

Of the total number of detected electricity theft cases of Rs 7.25 crore, Rs 5.6 crore was detected in just two cases of power theft by industrial users in the state capital in one month.

On April 1, a team of BSEB officials raided Dwarika Foods, a flourmill in Patna City, and detected electricity theft of Rs 2.08 crore.

Another major case of electricity theft by an industrial user was detected on March 12 in a raid conducted on Jagdamba Ventures Private Limited in Patliputra Industrial Area. Electricity worth Rs 3.5 crore was found to have been stolen.

Amit said that power was being stolen in both the firms by a high technology mechanism using remote-controlled devices. He added it was difficult to detect pilferage because the meters were being suppressed, not stopped. The BSEB, in recent months, has taken several steps to streamline the transmission, distribution and revenue realisation system to make the board financially viable. And for that, it has launched a special drive to realise long-pending dues from defaulters apart from conducting raids to nab the power pilferers across the state.