35 kg gold seized, four smugglers held
KATHMANDU, JULY 11:
Sleuths from the Central Investigation Bureau today rounded up four members of an organised smuggling racket with 35 kg of hallmark gold. Officials described it as the largest single seizure of the precious yellow metal ever in the country.
The arrestees are Nima Chhiring Tamang, 24, of Sindhupalchowk, Gyamjo Lama, 57, of Kathmandu, Mohan Kumar Agrawal, 47, Sunsari, and Om Bahadur Bajracharya, 42, of Sindhupalchowk. The CIB sleuths had fanned out along the 100 km stretch from Sindhupalchowk to Kathmandu, and intercepted a container truck used for smuggling gold to Nepal via Tibet before pushing the precious metal to India at around 5:30 am.
“Acting on intelligence inputs from informants, we managed to impound the truck (Ba 3 Kha 2570) at Koteshwor. We found the gold hidden in the cavity of a front bumper of the truck. We arrested Nima, the truck driver, to bust the racket,” DIG Prakash Aryal, CIB director, said. The hallmark gold was in 35 pieces, of one kg each. Its market price is around Rs 147.93 million. The driver was the sole person on board the truck when the CIB intercepted it. Lama spilled the beans during investigation, revealing that Gyamjo, Mohan Kumar and Om Bahadur were involved in the illegal activity. This led to the arrest of the three. SSP Uttam Kumar Karki said the operation lasted more than 12 hours. “The overnight stakeout resulted in major gold seizure besides the arrest of the racketeers,” he said. A primary investigation suggests that Boudha and Kalikasthan-based businessmen Gyamjo and Mohan Kumar were to receive the gold from racketeers of organised crime working in various layers. The truck used for smuggling the gold belongs to Om Bahadur. Police have sent the detainees and the gold smuggled without invoice receipt to the Department of Revenue Investigation for further investigation. The CIB has also confiscated Rs 16,700, $100 and bluebook of the truck. Intelligence inputs suggest that 40 kg of gold is smuggled to Nepal from China via Tatopani customs on an average day. “We are still short of resources and hi-tech mechanism to intercept more smugglers,” Karki said, defending the law enforcement agency against charges that it has failed to control smuggling.
For IC’s sake
Smugglers have been importing gold to export it to India just to collect the Indian currency. Large quantity of gold is smuggled to India from China via Nepal as the country has been facing a shortage of Indian rupees in the treasury. Current unofficial exchange rate of Indian rupees is around Rs 164 while the official rate is Rs 160. Nepal has been facing Indian currency crunch in bilateral trade since 2011. The government has imposed a tax of Rs 3,000 for 10 gramme of gold while India’s new customs rate makes it roughly near Rs 2,880 per 10 gramme. Therefore, direct gain from smuggling is too limited.
Source: THT
