Gold Smuggling: GRP Arrests One Person Before Boarding Train
In a major crackdown on gold smuggling, the Government Railway Police (GRP) arrested one person with 1.5 kg of gold from Agartala railway station on Tuesday. The accused, Abul Basar, is a resident of Sunamura in the Sepahijala district.
According to GRP sources, Basar was about to board the Tejas Express for Guwahati when a GRP personnel on a tip-off intercepted him. The team searched his luggage and found 15 gold biscuits weighing 100 grams each concealed in his clothes.
The market value of the seized gold is around Rs 91 lakh. Basar was taken into custody and interrogated about the source and destination of the smuggled gold. He reportedly confessed that he had received the consignment from an unknown person in Agartala and was supposed to deliver it to another person in Guwahati.
The GRP registered a case under relevant sections of the Customs Act and informed the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) for further investigation.
Based on a secret information on 20.03.2023 one Abul Basar(23) S/o Atur Islam of Natunbazar, under Sonamura PS has been detained from Tejas Express at 1900 Hrs by GRP Tripura and seized 1.5 Kg Gold Biscuit (worth approx Rs 91 lakh)from his possession. Legal action is being taken. pic.twitter.com/BBun8Nif4W
— Tripura Police (@Tripura_Police) March 20, 2023
This is not an isolated incident of gold smuggling through Tripura. In recent months, several cases of seizure of smuggled gold have been reported from various parts of the state, especially along the border with Bangladesh.
In October last year, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) conducted raids at four locations in Guwahati and Sangli in connection with a smuggled gold haul worth Rs 42.89 crore from New Delhi railway station. The gold was consigned from Aizawl to Mumbai in domestic courier consignments and was suspected to have been sourced from Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan.
In August last year, the DRI seized 83.621 kg of smuggled gold bars worth Rs 42.89 crore at New Delhi railway station from eight passengers travelling by Dibrugarh-New Delhi Rajdhani Express on fake identity cards. The passengers had collected the consignment from Guwahati and were directed by their handlers based abroad.
Similarly, Assam has also witnessed several cases of gold smuggling through its borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh. In July last year, Meghalaya police busted an interstate gold smuggling racket and apprehended five persons including a woman with over 800 gm of gold worth more than Rs 50 lakh. The accused were smuggling the gold biscuits from Mizoram to Barpeta district in Assam.
These incidents indicate that Northeast India is being increasingly used as a transit hub by Myanmar-based smugglers to pump in Chinese gold into India through porous borders.
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