In a significant breakthrough, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Meghalaya Police on Sunday recovered key evidence, including a missing gold chain of Raja Raghuvanshi, who was killed in Sohra last month.
The searches by the ED also covered certain vehicle owners, auto workshops, and traders in Ernakulam, Thrissur, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Kottayam and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu).
The federal probe agency also said it seized Rs 12 crore in cash (including about Rs crore in foreign currency), gold jewellery worth Rs 6 crore, silver about 10 kg along with four vehicles following raids launched on Friday in multiple states.
Custom authorities have been keeping strict vigil on the cargo movements from Bhutan, Taiwan, China, Afghanistan, South Korea Japan, and Dubai since January.
Police in West Bengal seized a large cache of arms and ammunition from a flat in North 24 Parganas district, arresting one person in connection with the seizure. The recovered items include firearms, ammunition, cash, gold, and antique coins.
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has stepped up its watch on the import of unbranded gold jewellery amid a spurt in seizures on international borders and from importers. During FY24, the CBIC and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) jointly seized about 5 tonnes of gold, 30 per cent more than what they did in FY23. In FY23, 3.5 tonnes of gold was confiscated.
The rise in illegal imports of the yellow metal has caught the eye of the finance ministry.
Based on the estimate, a courier bringing in 1 kg of gold currently worth around $40,000 at world prices could earn $470 if not caught.
Kannada actress Ranya Rao's frequent trips to Dubai have come under intense scrutiny following her arrest for allegedly smuggling gold into India.
Officials were surprised at how quickly smugglers appraised the Covid situation to recruit jobless migrant workers to ship gold.
Gujarat tops the chart with total seizure worth over Rs 510 crores, followed by Tamil Nadu at Rs 270.15 crores, Andhra Pradesh over Rs158 crores, Punjab Rs 155.91 crores and Uttar Pradesh Rs 142.31 crores.
According to officials, this year there has been a three-fold increase in the total seizure, which was Rs 322 crore in 2021, Rs 347 crore in 2022 and Rs 1,021 crore so far in 2023.
Seizures in poll-bound states see sharp rise since implementation of Model Code of Conduct.
Key accused in the sensational gold smuggling in diplomatic bags case, Swapna Suresh, on Wednesday claimed a co-accused in the case was allegedly forcibly taken away from her residence on Wednesday morning, after she claimed there was a threat to her life and that is why she gave a statement to a court about the alleged involvement of others, including the Kerala chief minister.
He had taken charge as the 25th director general of the Indian Coast Guard on July 19 last year.
'Justice may or may not happen, but who are those people who did this to her?' 'If the hospital authorities had helped us that day, or the police, then the real culprits would have been caught.' 'Getting justice for my daughter is my goal now and I want the CM to remember that.'
Kerala IT Secretary M Sivasankar was removed as Secretary to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday, in the backdrop of the gold smuggling controversy, where the role of a former woman employee of the IT department is being probed.
A day after Suresh, a prime accused who was recently released on bail gave a series of interviews to television channels, Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly V D Satheesan accused Chief Minister Pinarayi's office of intervening to get the illegal baggage released and helping the accused to leave the state.
As the raids were completed, the I-T team took two managers of the distillery located at Sutapada to an unknown location for interrogation, they said.
The searches were carried out on June 14-15 at 10 premises in Prayagraj, Lucknow and Delhi, the agency said in a statement.
An interim report on the action has also been sent by the field investigation wing of the income tax department to the Central Board of Direct Taxes in Delhi, the administrative body for the department.
In the past 18 months, the department of revenue intelligence has seized 50 containers of cigarettes, valued at nearly Rs 200 crore
The Madras high court has directed the Tamil Nadu Crime Branch-CID police to probe the case of 'missing' gold, which left the country's premier investigating agency red-faced.
The seizure occurred during raids at eight premises of a group engaged in sand mining in Tamil Nadu.
The searches since December 22, which resulted in Jain's arrest, also included searches at the trader's residential/factory premises in Kannauj, wherein about Rs 17 crore in cash, 23 kg of gold and 600 kg sandalwood oil having a market value of about Rs 6 crore have been recovered, the ministry said in a release.
The last two I-T teams left the premises, one each in Odisha and Jharkhand, carrying with them a number of seized "incriminating documents" and data cloned from electronic gadgets in the early morning hours.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes has said the government has not introduced any new provision regarding the chargeability of tax on jewellery.
Following recent govt moves, seizures shoot up in Nepal and Bangladesh
The gold, weighing over 30 kg, was seized from the "diplomatic baggage" that had landed by air cargo at the Thiruvananthapuram international airport recently from the Gulf.
The ED conducted further searches at 21 locations across India.
The onus to explain that the gold jewellery was inherited or bought from known sources of income would be on the owner.
The same day the tax sleuths had raided the house of DMK MP S Jagathrakshakan and some of those linked to him. The MP from Arakkonam has interests in a variety of business sectors.
An alert has been issued by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, lead agency to check smuggling and customs duty evasion, to all international transit points across the country, official sources said.
Three persons are being questioned in connection with the massive seizure.
The investigation agency said during the custody, Suresh had disclosed that she had kept proceeds of the crime at the bank lockers and invested as deposits in various banks.
Disproportionate assets of Kamaraj stood at Rs 58.44 crore and he has been booked for criminal conspiracy and offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, according to the FIR.
In what is being described as the 'biggest ever seizure of cash' by an enforcement agency, unaccounted cash -- one report said more than Rs 177 crore (Rs 1.77 billion), another said Rs 257 crores (Rs 2.57 billion), a third said Rs 194.45 crores (Rs 1.94 billion) -- was unearthed from perfume trader Piyush Jain's home in Kanpur.
The Chhattisgarh police has arrested two people in connection with a Rs 20-crore burglary from a jewellery store in Delhi earlier this week and recovered around 18.5 kg of gold and diamond ornaments from them, a senior official said on Friday, even as the probe suggested involvement of only one person in the incident.
Dealers anticipated a sharp rise in jewellery demand this wedding season, but then came demonetisation.
Official imports into India shrank almost 90 per cent in the six months to November
