TIA CURRENCY HAUL: Cop hand revealed; some say more than meets the eye
KATHMANDU, OCT 08 -
A police constable was involved in a bid to smuggle out illegal foreign currency notes from the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), the Airport Police said on Sunday. The police on Friday seized currency notes worth Rs 12,340,389 from an Indian national aboard an international aircraft.
The Airport Police said Constable Sobit Karki had helped one Binod Kumar Soni, 35, to board the Fly Dubai aircraft with the bag of money, an explanation some police officials refused to buy.
While the police are still interrogating Soni, Karki is absconding. According to DIG Narayan Bastakoti, the police were able to “solve” the case with the help of videos recorded in CCTV cameras in the country’s only international airport.
The cameras captured Soni dropping his bag of money at one corner of the terminal. He is then seen moving towards the immigration department, completing all the formalities and proceeding towards the runway. He also cleared two other layers of security on the way. After having cleared the last check at Sterile Hall, Soni is seen entering the toilet at the hall’s exit, where he apparently received the bag from Karki, who, in the video, enters the toilet before Soni. “Constable Karki apparently picked up the bag from where Soni had dropped it earlier,” DIG Bastakoti told a press conference at the TIA. According to Bastakoti, Karki was able to take the money to the Sterile Hall as police personnel are usually not frisked at the airport. “We were shocked to see him enter the toilet with the bag just before Soni did,” said Bastakoti. “We immediately tried to call him (Karki), but he was out of contact.” A permanent resident of Okhaldhunga, Karki had been living in a rented apartment at Balaju. Police put up a vigil in his apartment the whole of Saturday night, but the constable did not show up.
Soni, who had flown to Dubai 11 days ago too, has confessed that Karki helped him transport the money then as well, according to Bastakoti.
Ruling out media reports that he himself may have been involved in the case, Bastakoti said investigations so far and the video footage are proof of his innocence. “I am nowhere in the scene,” he said. “It is just Constable Karki so far. We have also retrieved over 200 call details between Soni and Karki. Investigations are on.”
However, a few police officials and investigators outside as well as inside the TIA rebuffed the Airport Police’s explanation. “How can a constable have the courage to take such a big step?” a National Investigation Division official at the TIA told the Post. “The TIA police are trying to close down the case by saying that it was just Karki who was seen in the videos. It is obvious that senior policemen asked Karki to carry the bag to the toilet. A thorough investigation must be carried out,” the official said.
Soni, who runs a shop of electrical goods at Mahabouddha, had been living in a rented apartment at Kuleshwor. He hails from Rajasthan, India. The police hit upon the currency notes after one Ramesh Milan KC called a TIA official at 7:30 pm on Friday, saying one of the planes due to take off had a bomb in it. Six international flights were evacuated immediately, and a thorough search was carried out in all the airplanes, during which Soni was arrested with the money.
Source: The Kathmandu Post
