The duo stopped IOCL petrol bunk in Bagepalli, which is about 100 kms from Bangalore city. As Mansoor’s bike had half tank of fuel, he decided not to fill fuel. But same was not the case with the Yamaha R3 rider. He needed to fill fuel in order to continue with the journey.
Soon after filling fuel, the duo started their journey. But in less than a km, Mansoor saw white fumes coming out of his friend’s R3. Soon the bike stopped moving and engine stopped. They tried to start the bike, but it did not start. Below is the entire incident in Mansoor’s words, which he has shared with Rushlane.
Yesterday (8 Oct 2017) me and my friend were riding to Gandikota from Bangalore. We stopped for filling petrol at an IOCL petrol bunk in Bagepalli. It’s approx 100km from Bangalore city. Since my bike had almost half tank, I didn’t fill.
After filling in his bike, we continued the journey, less than a kilometer from the pump, my friend started seeing smoke coming out near the engine in his bike (Yamaha R3) and the bike was not moving properly.
I opened his tank and tried to smell to make sure that it was petrol itself they filled, but it smelled nothing like petrol. In fact, it didn’t have any smell.
We decided to go back to the petrol pump and a few 100 meters in and we found two guys in a pulsar having the same issues. His bike is not moving at all.
We somehow reached the pump (I pushed from my bike) and described the situation. It became clear that the “petrol” they filled was not really petrol, but a mixture of muddy water and petrol.
We tried to call the manager from the number provided there in the pump and it was no luck. We even tried to contact the police and they said come to the station.
Finally, the pump staff arranged a mechanic to drain and clean the tank of both bikes. But that mechanic (he was a very young lad) didn’t know how to drain petrol from a fuel injected bike. They called for another guy.
The staff arranged a pipe to siphon out the “liquid” from the tank and the only way to drain the tank completely was to remove the tank and drain it.
With the help of Youtube, we removed the tank on the R3 and drained it completely. By this time the other mechanic arrived and helped in fixing the other bike and re-assembling my friend’s bike.
Finally, after spending almost 4 hours there, the bikes started again ( they filled approx 2L actual petrol from another pump in each bikes ). We went to the nearest pump with the staff of IOCL and filled full tank. The bikes are fine (at least for now)
Check the images to see the actual quality of the “petrol”.
As a consumer, how do I know what kind of shit these people are filling in our vehicles? And who’s gonna be responsible if something happens to the vehicles? And the worst of it, nobody in the management gave any help in this regard. Don’t they have quality check BEFORE they put the fuel in their system?
Mansoor is not the only one who has reported such an issue with IOCL. Aarif Aarifudeen has also shared a similar video with us which can be watched below.
Update – IOCL reached out to us and promised that they will pay for the service of the bike to fix the damage caused. But it is not clear what action they will take against the fuel station owner.