The police on Tuesday busted a gold-smuggling racket involving high officers of the Customs and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and other airport staff at Calicut International Airport. A case was registered against CISF assistant commandant Naveen under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The police said gold had been smuggled in with the help of these officers at least 60 times.
The police said they were investigating the deeper connections of the racket involving officers and employees at the airport. The police could identify the CISF and Customs links following the arrest of four men from a parked jeep outside the airport on October 5.
On questioning, the police not only recovered 503 g of smuggled in gold compound from them, but also stumbled upon a bundle of key pieces of information that unveiled the involvement of the CISF assistant commandant and some Customs officers.
Following specific information, the police zeroed in on Sharafali who worked at the airport’s luggage section. From Sharafali, the police seized ₹1 lakh and found incriminating information about the involvement of airport officers.
It was found that the CISF assistant commandant used to pass key information about the duty of Customs officers to the kingpins of gold racket and the gold carriers’ travel plans were set accordingly. A person named Rafeek from Koduvally was found to be one of the kingpins of the racket.
Three sim cards were found to have been used by those involved in the racket. The police said that all of them used false names such as ‘Trading Oman’ and ‘Jeddah Care2’ in their phones to identify each other.
The police said that Rs. 6.35 lakh had been handed over to Mr. Naveen’s contact in Delhi in lie of his help for gold smuggling. According to the police, he was the key person at the airport.
