SDPO, 4 uniform personnel arrested for gold smuggling

MP | 15 September 2018, Kolkata: SDPO of Jaigaon Anirudha Thakur, two police officers and as many Army personnel have been arrested by the CID for their alleged involvement in gold smuggling from neighbouring Bhutan and Bangladesh, a day after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee directed the police administration to stop such crimes along the international borders with the state. 

According to sources, for the past few months, CID officials were getting information regarding gold smuggling along the border. To apprehend the smugglers, CID officials started gathering information and recently, they got a tip-off that a large amount of gold would be smuggled through the same location. Later, the CID officials came to know that the Alipurduar District Police had already seized some gold biscuits but when they tried to cross-check, no trace of gold seizure was found on pen and paper.

Following this, the CID started monitoring the movements of the Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) of Jaigaon, Sub-Inspector of Police (SI) of Hasimara out-post Satyendra Nath Roy, and former Officer in-Charge (OC) of Hasimara out-post Kamalendra Narayan. Later, it was found that the police had detained the gold smugglers with a consignment of the yellow metal weighing 15 kg on September 10. But no impression was there in the legal papers and no arrests had been made.

The CID initiated a surveillance over the three police personnel. Sources informed on Friday that Thakur and other police personnel were detained for interrogation during which they stated that two personnel from the Army intelligence were also involved. Immediately investigators detained Pawan Brahma, Lieutenant Colonel and Dashrath Singh, Constable of Army intelligence, Hasimara, for interrogation. Later all five of them were arrested for allegedly misappropriating and receiving illegal gratification to avoid legal action against the gold smugglers. After a night-long raid, 15 gold bars weighing 1 kg each have been recovered by the CID. Upon questioning about the source of these gold bars, the arrested persons could not provide satisfactory answers. The investigators are suspecting that more such uniform personnel may be involved in such cases of gold smuggling.