FIR 218/2026, registered at Tando Jam police station under Section 462-J PPC and Section 39-A of the Electricity Act 1910, names eight residents of the Sindh Agriculture University colony and a private line man accused of supplying them direct connections.
TANDOJAM: The Hyderabad Electric Supply Company has registered a case against nine people, including a private line man, over alleged large-scale electricity theft in the residential colony of Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam, according to the first information report seen by The Lahore Times.
The FIR, numbered 218/2026, was registered at Tando Jam police station in Hyderabad district on the complaint of Hesco Sub-Divisional Officer Hamza Manzoor Hussain Soomro. It invokes Section 462-J of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 39-A of the Electricity Act 1910, and is entered for the court of the Civil Judge and Judicial Magistrate No. 10, Hyderabad.
According to the complaint, the SDO left his office around midday on 3 September with a team of Hesco staff, including a line superintendent, billing staff and a meter reader, for a round of routine line checking and recovery from defaulters. The team checked lines in several Tandojam neighbourhoods before reaching the agricultural university colony, where the inspection was carried out between 1300 and 1400 hours.
The time of occurrence is recorded as 1400 hours and the matter was reported at the police station at 1800 hours the same day. The place of occurrence is listed as approximately one and a half kilometres east of the police station.
The complaint states that residents of official university quarters were found drawing electricity directly from the low-tension line by means of hook connections — the practice commonly known as a kunda. It alleges that a private line man, Imran Siyal, was arranging these direct connections, and describes him as having been at an electricity pole handling PVC line when the team arrived, before climbing down and fleeing. The complaint also alleges obstruction of the team in the performance of official duty.
The schedule attached to the FIR lists eight residents of the colony, each against a Hesco consumer account number, with the nature of the theft recorded identically in every case as a direct cut on the LT line. They are named as Nizam Channar, Asif Kandhar, Ayaz Hussain, Rashid Khokhar, Hakim Ali Khaskheli, Ashfaq Ali, Mohammad Korral Bhatti and Shahzad Ahmed Soomro. With Imran Siyal, the case names nine.
The report was recorded by SIP Muhammad Hashim Bhirani of Tando Jam police station, on a Hesco reference dated 3 September.
None of the nine has commented. The Lahore Times has not been able to reach any of those named or their counsel. Every allegation described here is drawn from the complainant’s account as recorded in the FIR and remains untested; all nine are accused, not convicted.
The action is the second by Hesco in the colony within days, following a case registered against 14 people during an earlier operation at the same location. That earlier case does not form part of FIR 218/2026 and is reported separately.
The central element of the complaint is not the individual connections but the allegation of facilitation. Tapping a distribution line requires technical access, and where a person with line-work skills is alleged to be arranging supply for multiple households, a utility’s case moves from isolated pilferage to organised theft, which carries different evidentiary weight. Siyal is described in the FIR as a private line man, meaning he is not alleged to be a Hesco employee.
Unbilled consumption remains one of the more tractable components of the distribution losses that feed Pakistan’s circular debt, and the cost of what cannot be recovered at the point of consumption is ultimately spread across paying consumers through tariff determinations. Direct connections also bypass protective equipment, raising the risk of electrocution and equipment fire and contributing to transformer overloading that produces outages for legally connected households on the same feeder.
Cases under electricity theft provisions proceed through the criminal courts, while the utility is separately empowered to raise detection bills for assessed unbilled consumption. Hesco has indicated that operations in the area are continuing.
-Persons named in the FIR are accused, not convicted, and have not responded to the allegations.
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