Strange case of Mumbai: 73 crore water was stolen from well, FIR filed

Mumbai, October 17, 2019, Thursday

Mumbai police have registered a complaint against a person for stealing underground water from a well. The man, along with a water tanker, stole around Rs 73 crore worth of water during the last 11 years.

A strange case of stealing water worth Rs 73 crore has been registered against the owner of Pandya Mansion at Bomanji Master Lane at Kalabadevi in ​​Mumbai. The importance of the case has grown enormously in the case of Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently appealing for conservation and conservation of groundwater.

Earlier, there were cases of water theft from a municipal connection but this is probably the first case of ground water theft.

Police registered the case based on the evidence presented by RTI activist Suresh Kumar Dhoka and Suresh Kumar is the main complainant in the case. In the complaint, Tripura Prasad Nanlal Pandya, owner of Pandya Mansion and two directors of his company Prakash Pandya and Manoj Pandya have been accused of illegally digging two wells in their property.

Pandya later installed two water pumps at the site and sold it to a tanker owner and operator Arun Mishra, Shravan Mishra and Dheeraj Mishra, through illegal power connection.

The complaint states that the accused had sold underground water worth Rs 73.19 crore from 2006 to 2017. According to the complaint, the accused have so far filled around 6.10 lakh tankers and sold water.

The capacity of each tanker is 10 thousand liters of water and the average cost of each tanker is Rs 1,200. After the case came up, the National Green Tribunal ordered both wells to be permanently closed.