Nilambur MLA P V Anvar not only countered Pinarayi Vijayan's assertion that the Kerala Police were crime-busters and not facilitators of gold smuggling but also challenged the chief minister to announce a judicial probe into the police-gold smuggling link.
"Can the CM order a probe into the police's gold smuggling activities with a sitting judge at its head and a group of honest police officers to support," Anvar said during his two-hour press conference in Nilambur on Thursday.
On September 21, the chief minister quoted from a police probe to show as unfounded Anvar's allegation that the Malappuram Police were swindling a portion of the gold it seized. The chief minister said that if at all there was a weight difference between the gold confiscated by the police and the booty it eventually submitted before the court, it was the result of a purification process undertaken to extract the gold from the carrier.
The CM said that the gold came covered in fabric or mixed with other chemicals to avoid detection. When gold is extracted from other ingredients used to disguise it, it will automatically lose weight. In short, the loss was not theft, as Anvar charged, but the result of a chemical process. He said that in certain cases, there was a difference of more than 500 grams.
The CM then went on to imply that Anvar was the cover for smugglers who felt thwarted by the efficiency of the police.
In retaliation, Anvar produced videos claiming to be evidence to his allegation that the police were indeed indulging in theft and were in the habit of seizing gold from carriers, flouting all mandatory conditions. There were two videos in which Anvar was seen interviewing carriers who managed to hoodwink the Customs but were nabbed by the police after they came out of the Karipur Airport.
In both the cases, the carriers told Anvar that 900 grams of gold were hidden in capsule form in their rectums. In one case, the gold the police had reported to the court was 526 grams, nearly 60% loss. As for the second case, Anvar said that he was unable to find any official information about the gold seized by the police. "In this case, there is no proof that the police had seized 900 grams of gold," Anvar said.
The MLA said that both the carriers were taken to a private hospital to retrieve the hidden gold. But he said there were no witnesses when the gold was recovered. "The X-ray evidence of the gold recovered from their bodies would still be there in the private hospital," Anvar said.
Also, he said that the purification was not done in customs-approved labs, which is mandatory.
In light of these two cases, Anvar called for a judicial probe into the 188 cases of gold seizure recorded by the Malappuram police. "The truth would be revealed if at least 25 of the carriers involved were interrogated," Anvar said. "I knew the police would not do their job and that's why I decided to investigate on my own," Anvar said.
