KARACHI, Dec 4: In a major anti-power theft operation on Tuesday night, the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation rounded up 87 people at Liaquatabad Super Market, Nairang Shopping Centre and Firdous Shopping Centre.

As KESC officials, aided by at least 50 personnel of an army monitoring team, descended upon the encroachments that lined both sides of Sharea Pakistan in Liaquatabad, small-time shopkeepers scrambled to unhook illegal power connections. Still, the raiding party managed to remove as many as 2,000 illegal power connections, referred to as kundas in common parlance, which used to rob the KESC of at least Rs80,000 daily.

The raid, witnessed by newsmen who had accompanied the raiding party, was conducted on the strength of a site inspection report according to which power theft increases three times during Ramazan, especially at make-shift shopping stalls.

KESC officials who conducted the raid told Dawn that the power utility had distributed forms at the shopping centres, urging the shopkeepers to avail themselves of the newly launched Immediate Connection Policy under which people could obtain temporary connections at lower rates. Only 18 shopkeepers responded.

Although almost all the arrested people said that they were passers-by who had been mistakenly arrested by the raiding party, the KESC officials said that supplementary bills would be issued to them asking them to pay for the amount of electricity being stolen for the past one month.

There were fireworks at the market when an Eid buyer made an impassioned speech saying that the KESC was bent upon depriving people of a chance to purchase things at lower rates. “This market is known all over the city for selling things at reduced rates. Why does the KESC try to make things difficult for people?” he wondered.

When nearly all the alleged power thieves had been bundled off to a KESC police station on Tuesday night, a woman appeared and said that her sons — 16-year-old Farhan and 18-year-old Arif — had been taken into custody by the KESC while they wereshopping with her at Liaquatabad Super Market. Her son Farhan had been released. Her other son, Arif, was arrested when he admitted to having stolen power at his stall.

At a press briefing at the KESC station in Federal Capital Area, a spokesman for the power utility said that at least 600 people had been arrested for power theft since the first of Ramazan. “The transmission and distribution losses of the KESC are at least 40 per cent. It is important to bear in mind that one per cent of loss costs the KESC Rs500 million. Only in Defence, the KESC has managed to bring down the losses to 23 per cent.”

He added that the KESC could not be criticized for initiating anti-power theft operation at a low-income locality because such operations had first started in Defence and other posh localities. He recalled that a KESC raiding party had found power theft in a mosque in Defence.