Akela
THE Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has arrested seven members including a female of notorious Deepak Suhani gang for smuggling gold at Devi Ahilyabai Holkar airport, Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The DRI officials also seized 5.5 kilogram gold valued Rs 2.1 crore in local market.
The incident occurred on September 29, 2019 at Indore international airport. The accused had arrived on Air India flight No-904 (Dubai to Indore) and were had onward tickets to Mumbai by Indigo flight in the morning.
The accused persons, have been identified as Naveen Goklani, Sapna Bhatia, Dinesh Chauhan, Vijay Virmahani, Sunder Prithwani, Rajesh Ahuja and Pradeep Bhalwani. All accused are residents of Ulhasnagar, Thane district in Maharashtra.
The accused had converted the gold into paste form and filled it in capsule. Some Gold was also concealed on the body, some was swallowed and recovered from the rectum.
Some accused are habitual and frequent flyers involved as carriers in this smuggling racket. All are associated with Deepak Suhani gang. Father of one accused Naveen, a Haresh Goklani had been arrested at Mumbai and Amritsar airport for similar offences in the past. Also, an extortion FIR has been registered at Ulhasnagar-1 police station against Haresh Goklani.
ABI view: Gold smuggling has turned out to be a severe headache for the authorities and has caused tremendous loss to the National Exchequer due to evasions of duties. The gold market is highly unregulated with large dealings in cash. All attempts by government to regulate gold and bullion markets have met with lot of resistance and has failed. Government needs to redouble its efforts to tackle the menace of gold smuggling. In the mean – time one has to rely on honest DRI officials who have been able to detect many cases of gold smuggling and have arrested many persons associated with it.