Thiruvananthapuram: Prime accused in the gold smuggling case had resorted to forgery to carry out their activities. The central probe agencies suspect that accused Swapna Suresh was also involved in financial fraud too and PS Sarith Kumar, her former colleague at the UAE Consulate, used duplicate seals and letter heads of the diplomatic mission in order to sneak in gold from abroad through official consignments.
Probe revealed that Swapna engaged in financial irregularities three months after joining the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. The fraud was allegedly committed in connection with the UAE National Day events.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs And International Cooperation had received two complaints about the embezzlement.
After the second complaint was received in December 2018, an auditing was carried out and more irregularities were found. The auditing wing deduced that Swapna and gang had siphoned off Rs 40 lakh. It is suspected that Swapna was ousted after the fraud was unearthed.
As reported earlier, she had subsequently joined Air India Stats Airport Services and later the Space Park of the Kerala government. At the former place she faced a Crime Branch probe over fraud related to her educational credentials as well as a false sexual harassment case. She recently lost the Space Park job as the gold smuggling bid was quashed by the Customs.
Fake seal, letter heads used
Meanwhile, probe agencies have found evidence that Sarith, who is the first accused in the smuggling case, had bought a machine to forge the UAE Consulate's seal. It was purchased from a shop near the Kerala Secretariat.
"Sarith had bought the seal printing machine saying it is for a printing firm at Nedumangad," the shop owner revealed.
It was to avoid suspicion that he had bought the machine rather than resorting to forgery by engaging someone.
The owner of a computer centre in Thiruvallam also told the NIA that Sarith had taken printouts on the Consulate's letter head. He allegedly forged the letter head of the Consulate on his laptop.
Thus, the probe team has concluded that fake documents of the Consul General were forged to carry out the gold smuggling.
The machine was bought and printouts taken a year ago. Thus, it has become evident that the gold smuggling too has been going on since then.
A multi-agency probe was initiated after the Customs seized 30kg gold from a diplomatic baggage addressed to the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram on July 5. The Home Ministry had directed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe the case. The arrested include Sarith, Swapna and their associate Sandeep Nair as well as a few history-sheeters in gold smuggling.
When caught Swapna and Sarith were no longer employees of the Consulate, but had exploited their knowledge of consular activities to smuggle gold from the UAE. They were however a part of a larger racket that plotted and executed the smuggling operations through the diplomatic route.
