By Prachi Mishra
Pune Customs busted the Hawala racket and caught two people involved in the crime. Upon receiving a secret intelligence over large foreign currency being carried out of the country by three woman passengers travelling to Dubai, Pune customs sought immediate action. With the help of Dubai officials, the women were detained at the Dubai Airport and sent back to India again. They were intercepted at the Pune Airport, when their Delhi to Pune flight landed on Feb 17. Upon thorough checking of their luggage, the customs officials recovered $400,100.
The three female passengers upon interrogation by AIU officials revealed that they are all post graduate students and they had booked their flight with the help of local agent Khushboo Agarwal. The students further alleged that the bag with cash worth Rs 3.47 crore was also given to them by Agarwal.
Agarwal had insisted the students, who were going for a seven day trip to Dubai in an Indigo flight on Feb 16, by giving them two bags saying it contains important information and needs to be handed over to a person they will meet at the Dubai airport itself. The students only got involved in the racket unknowingly, thinking they are doing an act in good faith.
The 100$ bills were meticulously hidden among notebook pages, and multiple notebooks were used for the same. Customs officials had already taken under custody the local agent responsible for the booking of the tickets for the three women who are all in their early 20s along with the Mumbai Forex trader, named Mohammed Aamir, who was part of the whole smuggling operation. Upon further investigation of his firm around 45 lakh rupees were found in different countries’ currency.
Agarwal and Aamir both were presented before the court that remanded them under customs’ custody for 6 days. Currently, both of them are in Yerwada central jail under the 14 days judicial custody that started from 24th February.