New Delhi (Gurpreet Singh)— In a major crackdown on the illegal hoarding and black marketing of cooking gas, the Delhi Police dismantled an unauthorized LPG storage facility in South Delhi’s Rajpur Khurd village on Tuesday. Acting on specific intelligence, a team from the South District Police raided a plot where they discovered a massive stockpile of 223 Indane LPG cylinders being stored without any valid license or safety authorization. The facility was allegedly being operated by 38-year-old Hitesh Rathi and 40-year-old Arvind Kumar, both of whom were arrested at the scene after failing to provide any legal documentation or a satisfactory explanation for the large-scale storage.
The seizure included a mix of domestic and commercial cylinders, specifically 16 filled and 45 empty domestic units, alongside 162 empty commercial cylinders. Beyond the gas containers, police also recovered an electronic weighing machine and eight safety caps, suggesting the site may have been used for more than just storage. Officials from the Food and Supplies Department and representatives from Indane Gas were summoned to the location to verify the stock and assist in the counting process. Authorities emphasized that stockpiling such a significant volume of highly inflammable material in a residential area without mandatory safety protocols posed a severe fire and explosion risk to the local community.
The accused have been booked at the Maidan Garhi police station under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Essential Commodities Act. This raid is part of an intensified city-wide enforcement drive by the Delhi Police to curb artificial shortages and price manipulation of LPG, which has become a concern amid the ongoing energy supply disruptions in West Asia. Investigations are currently underway to trace the source of these cylinders and determine if a larger supply network is involved in the illegal trade.
