A team of Rab found huge quantity of water in fuel reservoirs in the depot, a concern of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), and arrested Depot Manager Rafiqul Islam and two of its operators Billal Hossain and Abdullah Al Mamun who allegedly mixed water with diesel and sold it to fuel stations.

Rab sources said drivers of some tankers yesterday morning, while checking to see if they had the correct quantity of fuel, discovered that one third of their load was water. They apprised Rab officials of the matter.

A tanker driver said he discovered the matter in the morning, but as he complained to the staffs of the depot they manhandled him out of the depot.

On information, A Rab team led by a magistrate raided the depot and found each 200-litre fuel barrel had 59 litres of water in it. They also discovered Reservoir-11, with the capacity of 13,16,000 litres of fuel, was entirely full of water and contained no fuel at all. Sources said the reservoir was filled with water six month ago. In the diesel filled Reservoir-16, 670 litres of water was discovered. It has the capacity to hold 1,32,000 litres of diesel.

Assistant General Manager (Sales) of Jamuna Oil Company Habibur Rahman Sikdar said so far no filling station lodged any complains regarding the matter. He, however, said that they would investigate the incident.

Fuel distribution from the depot was stopped for several hours following the incident.

Manager Rafiqul told reporters that Reservoir-11 was being tested for leakage by filling it with water. He said water could have been pumped into Reservoir-16 by mistake creating this situation.

In this connection, Abdul Alim Chowdhury of Rab-11 lodged a case against the three arrestees on charge of fuel adulteration.