Kochi: In a first, the Customs Preventive, Cochin and Kerala Police busted a major racket dealing with replicas of global brands of watches and sunglasses understood to be smuggled into the country from China.

In a joint operation, the officers raided six wholesale dealers at Tirur in Malappuram district and two locations on Broadway in Ernakulam district. The seizure includes almost 8,500 watches from Tirur and at least 700 from Broadway.

A large collection of fake RayBan glasses was also confiscated. According to reports, the watches ranging from around Rs 7,000 to over a lakh were similar to the originals in make and branding. A copy of the Casio G-Shock watch with a market value of around Rs 7,000 was sold for nearly Rs 3,000 by these dealerships.

"The exact copies or replicas of international watch brands such as Rado, Longines, Tissot, Casio, Casio G-Shock were seized from these centres. The Customs will be doing further investigation," said an officer part of the team.

This was the biggest joint operation in Kerala to tackle the trade of such replicas. The dealerships have been slapped with cases related to copyright violations.

The Customs Preventive team was led by Customs Commissioner K Padmavathy. The Kochi City Police team was led by City Commissioner S Syamsundar and Malappuram district police chief S Sasidharan led the unit in Tirur.