Gold smuggling: Doubt on role of airlines staff

HYDERABAD: After the discovery of the nexus between porters at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport and gold smugglers, customs officials now suspect that lower-rung ground staff of a few airlines may also be in connivance with smugglers. Accordingly, it has been decided to make it mandatory for all airline staff to undergo customs clearance before exiting the airport.
Sources said the role of an airline employee surfaced in the confession of an accused, who had tried to exit the airport with seven kilograms of gold but was nabbed by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials a couple of months ago. The airline staffer was later produced in court by the officials, but he was discharged due to lack of material evidence.
Now with the role of two RGIA porters - Praveen Kumar and Mohammed Farooq - in the gold smuggling racket led by kingpin Syed Sajid alias Ajju of Jahanuma, becoming clearer, the suspicion against airline staffers has become stronger. Ajju, in fact, was arrested on Saturday.
"Porters are not checked either by customs officials or other security agencies as they frequently keep moving. However, they will not take the risk unless they have the support of airlines staff, who enjoy the privilege of not undergoing customs check before reaching the departure point. After the DRI nabbed a passenger with 7 kg gold some time ago and the latest incident, the airlines staff too will have to go through customs clearance," a highly-placed source told TOI.
Meanwhile, during the questioning of Ajju and his associate Sayeed, officials came to know these operators were working at the best of some hawala racketeers, who pool up crores of rupees to purchase gold in Gulf countries where the yellow metal is cheaper.
"The smuggling racket is a syndicate of hawala operators, travel agents, hired operatives and a few airline staff. The travel agents, in order to misguide security agencies, book two return tickets - one with a week's gap after reaching the destination and another one or two days after reaching the foreign locale," sources said.
Hawala operations are being carried out with the exchange of cash (in Hyderabad) between the local contact and a person who works at the behest of the gold supplier in Saudi Arabia. The kingpin would send a courier to a foreign country, where he collects the gold and returns to the city.
When Task Force sleuths nabbed Ajju in possession of a huge stash of foreign currency on Saturday, he was planning to send two more couriers to Dubai and Bangkok to purchase gold and smuggle it into the city. Ajju runs a garments store in the name of 'Farooq Hosiery' at Deewan Devdi near Madina in Old City. His name cropped up when customs officials caught his courier, Ali bin Syed of Barkas, on June 19 with 4 kg gold at RGIA. Ajju, along with the currency worth Rs 93 lakh, was handed over to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers.