The police on Friday arrested from Kannur two key accused in the hawala money robbery case at Kodakara. The arrested, Mohammed Ali and Abdul Rasheed, are being interrogated, the police said.
It is reported that Abdul Rasheed leaked information about the hawala money deal to the gang of robbers. Both the accused got ₹5 lakh each as reward, they told the police. The police found that they made money deals worth ₹45 lakh after the robbery.
According to a complaint lodged by Shamjeer Shamsudheen, 37, of Kozhikode, with the Kodakara police, a gang waylaid him at the Kodakara flyover and robbed him of ₹25 lakh and his car while he was on his way from Kozhikode to Kochi on April 3. The car was later recovered from West Fort.
Though the complainant mentioned robbery of ₹25 lakh, the police later found that the money involved was much more. The police have arrested nine people in this connection. They recovered ₹23.3 lakh, 24 g of gold, and receipt of loan repayment certificate at a bank worth ₹6 lakh from one of the nine accused.
There were allegations that the money was meant for sabotaging the election process. Though the CPI(M) and the Congress had alleged a BJP link to the incident right from the beginning, the police gave hints about the connection only on Thursday.
According to G. Poonkuzhali, Thrissur SP, Dharmarajan of Kozhikode, who handed over the money to Shamjeer, is an RSS activist. Dharmarajan was entrusted with bringing the money from Kozhikode to Kochi. It was Sunil Naik, former State treasurer of Yuva Morcha, who handed over the money to Dharmarajan.
The police interrogated both. Sunil Naik told the police he had only business links with Dharmarajan. They will be interrogated again.
