Smuggling case accused destroyed crucial CCTV footage showing gold dealings

Thiruvananthapuram: The Customs Department has found that the accused in the Trivandrum Airport gold smuggling case had destroyed four days of crucial CCTV footage that could have had visuals of the dealings between the accused.

The department has found out that the CCTV footage that showed K T Ramees, an accused in the case, handing over gold at the house of another accused Shamju, a resident of Kozhikode, has been destroyed.

The Customs Department tried to recover the footage with the help of technical experts, but it was not successful. It has shared the report with other agencies, including the NIA, after a forensic examination revealed that footage of four days had been destroyed.

During interrogation by the Customs officials, K T Ramees confessed to handing over the gold at Shamju's house.

Ramees said gold was delivered on four days between May 1 and May 26. The department tried to examine the CCTV footage of the four days, but they could not find it.

Customs officials examined the CCTV footage from January to July 9, but found no evidence. They then approached cyber experts to find out if footage had been destroyed.

An examination of the available footage revealed that some parts of footage of the four days had been destroyed.

The scenes were destroyed in such a way that they cannot be recovered. During interrogation, Shamju admitted that the footage was removed.

While the accused had used modern techniques to destroy the footage, those very methods came to the help of the investigating officials in the case to prove that the footage had been deleted. Although the footage could not be recovered, the Customs Department was able to prove scientifically that the evidence was destroyed.

Investigative agencies had found that Ramees and Shamju had been involved in gold smuggling several times and that several people had invested in the gold smuggling activities through Shamju.

Besides Customs, the Enforcement Directorate and the National Investigation Agency are also probing smuggling of gold worth over Rs 100 crore through diplomatic baggage addressed to the UAE Consulate at Thiruvananthapuram since November last year.

The racket came to light when the Customs seized 30 kg of 24 carat gold worth Rs 14.82 crore at Thiruvananthapuram airport on July 5 this year.