Four Held for Peanut Theft from Jetpur Warehouse

07-Aug-2025 08:00 PM

Rajkot. More than 1200 bags of peanuts purchased from Gujarat farmers at minimum support price (MSP) disappeared from a rented warehouse located in Jetpur in Rajkot district.

This theft case reached the police and the police showed promptness and arrested four suspects. This includes a security guard and a personnel previously employed on contract basis.

This theft incident came to light when a regular inspection of the warehouse located in Jetalsar village was being done. Investigation revealed that a total of 57,600 bags of peanuts were stored in that warehouse while only 56,388 bags were present in stock.

In this way, 1212 bags of peanuts disappeared from the warehouse. About 50 kg of peanuts were packed in each bag and the total value of the missing goods was estimated at Rs 31.60 lakh.

This peanut was purchased from the farmers at the minimum support price of Rs 6783 per quintal by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED), a cooperative agency under the Central Agriculture Ministry.

This warehouse in Jetalsar village was rented on 5 December 2024, but there was no CCTV camera installed there and a guard sent by a security agency from Ahmedabad was deployed for security.

A technical assistant of the Central Warehousing Corporation filed a theft report with the police, in which it was said that peanuts were gradually stolen from the warehouse during the last several months.

The police started action after writing the report. The first suspect was that security guard because it was difficult to take anything out of the warehouse without his connivance.

After this, the name of a former employee also came to light. According to the investigating officer, it appears that the theft did not happen simultaneously but was done gradually over two-three months.