Kochi: As the probe into the gold smuggling carried out allegedly with the blessings of higher-ups in the Kerala government enters a decisive phase, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has likely identified a main carrier of the precious metal through the diplomatic channel.
The federal investigator has found that the bulk of the gold concealed and brought in diplomatic baggage, at least during the first 10 times, was carried by one Ratheesh, a resident of Hyderabad. He has been named as the accused number 29 in the sensational case.
Earlier it was reported that the Customs Department estimates that gold concealed in diplomatic parcels was smuggled in at least 21 times through the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport. This excludes the two parcels sent by the racket as a trial run.
Customs arrived at this estimate after the interrogation of Swapna Suresh and Sandeep Nair, the two main accused in the diplomatic baggage gold smuggling case that was detected on July 5.
The gang’s gold smuggling intensified in November and December 2019. According to some of the accused, the smuggling started with 3.5 kg of gold. However, the Customs Department believes 18 diplomatic parcels had 5-10 kg of smuggled gold each.
NIA hunt on
The NIA has begun efforts to trace Ratheesh with the help of Interpol.
Intelligence agencies have found out that soon after the NIA took over the probe a couple of months ago, Ratheesh was packed off to Saudi Arabia.
Ratheesh, who is suspected of having connections with the Maoist organisations, is known as Raju to the accused in the gold smuggling case. The latter known to Ratheesh includes Rameez and Jalala.
Based on the statement given by Rameez, Raju was arraigned as 29th accused in the case.
The investigation agency came to know that Raju and Ratheesh are the same person from the statements of Rabins Hamid who was brought from Dubai for questioning by the NIA. The NIA believes that Ratheesh has absolutely no connection to a few Hyderabad-based jewellers.
The manner in which he was sent to Saudi Arabia despite stringent restrictions in place for foreign travel in the wake of COVID-19, has raised serious doubts over his patrons.
Currency note as code
The ongoing probe also revealed Raju used to adopt a unique trick to procure gold that had arrived in the diplomatic bag. Before deploying his agent for the job, he used to send the picture of an Indian currency note via Telegram message service. The instructions were clear that the smuggled gold should be handed over only if the person produced the same currency note.
The racket used to receive the money against the smuggled gold in Dubai.
