KARACHI, Nov 8: Since the beginning of Ramazan, power theft in the city has increased manifold and the army monitoring and KESC teams arrested 69 power thieves during the last 48 hours, a KESC spokesman said on Friday.

He said that keeping in view the last year’s experience the KESC and AMTs had already chalked out a comprehensive plan to tackle the menace of illegal power use during the holy month.

Besides daytime checking of illegal use of power and disconnection for non-payment of electricity bills, additional special teams were constituted for night vigils of unauthorized use of disconnected supply and Kunda connections for various congregations and night cricket matches, the spokesman said.

He said the AMTs had resolved to curb the illegal use of electricity during Ramazan.

Anybody engaged in power theft for any cause would immediately be arrested and lodged at the KESC police station and would only be released after he paid the supplementary bill for the electricity being used illegally, the spokesman said.

He said the KESC had obtained “Fatwa” from eminent religious scholars, who maintained that as per the tenets of Islam power theft even for religious congregations was forbidden.

“Besides, commercial centres using illegal connections will be immediately disconnected and heavily penalized.” — APP