Ranchi, Aug. 17: Around 1,250 kg of copper, worth around Rs 6 lakh, was recovered from a mini truck on Balumath-Chatra road in Latehar district in the wee hours of yesterday.
Though no one could be arrested, Latehar SP Anoop Birtharay said the copper was stolen from Abhijeet Group's yet-to-be-commissioned power plant at Chakla village of Chandwa area.
This is not the first time when a theft was reported from the proposed super critical thermal power plant, which was incepted way back in 2008-09.
Police sources claimed at least 15 cases of theft of valuable materials and machineries have been reported from this jinxed plant, spread over 400 acres, in the past two months.
However, SP Birtharay claimed that police made recoveries and arrests whenever a theft was reported from the plant and its vicinity.
"It is practically not possible to guard 400-acres of the proposed power plant by a group of 20-25 jawans of Special Auxiliary Police (SAP)," he said while speaking to The Telegraph over phone.
Birtharay added that if the company did not deploy adequate number of private security guards, it would be a Herculean task for the police to prevent thefts.
Theft is not the only problem the company is facing.
A major fire broke out at the plant on June 1, gutting infrastructure worth crores, including a 400KV switch, cables, and transformer and turbine oils. Barely 10 days before this, another fire at the coal handling plant area had destroyed machineries worth crores.
Company executives alleged industrial sabotage but the police ruled it out.
During its peak time, the group intended to start generating 540MW from March 2012, before scaling up the capacity to 1,740MW, at its plant in Chandwa.
Abhijeet Group claimed to have invested Rs 8,000 crore-plus in Jharkhand and bagged as many as four coal blocks Brinda-Sisai, Moitra (both in Hazaribagh), Meral (Palamau) and Chitarpur (Latehar).
But in the wake of Coalgate scam, the central government, following a Supreme Court verdict in September last year, cancelled 214 out of 218 allocations across the country, leaving many proposed power projects in the lurch.
The projects included that of Abhijeet Group, Essar Power, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd among others.
The Abhijeet Group, which had promised to employ thousands of youths in the region, has been left in the lurch, bleeding amid poor law and order and alleged sabotage.
A large number of employees left the company last year and early this year for greener pastures with the company failing to pay salaries in time.
A manager rank official, who is still with the company, said: "There is almost daily instances of thefts at the plant site. What can we do? The company is in a bad shape and apparently not in a position to pump in funds any more."
