Pune, Sep 15 (IANS): In a major scam, at least 50 staffers working at a petrol pump run by the Pune Rural Police allegedly misappropriated over Rs 20 lakh and have been booked for fraud, officials said on Friday.

The scam, going on for over two years, emerged in an audit of the petrol pump run by the Pune Rural Police Welfare Board after a complaint was lodged with the Chaturshringi Police Station and a probe initiated.

The probe revealed that the staffers, working there from June 2021, till now that instead of depositing the income generated from sale of fuel at the petrol pump, had siphoned it off in small amounts, totalling to around Rs 20 lakh.

Some employees allegedly took the payments on their personal UPI accounts and committed other forms of frauds at the two petrol pumps, on Baner Road and Pashan Road.

While more than Rs 17.25 lakh was siphoned off from the Baner Road establishment, the Pashan Road facility was defrauded of another nearly Rs 2.93 lakh, shocking the investigators.

However, the details of the workers, how they were employed, their antecedents, etc were not immediately available, and further investigations are on.

The two petrol stations were inaugurated by the then Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil in 2021 and were run by the PRP Welfare Board, with the income utilised to carry out various initiatives for the police personnel and their families.