The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the Kerala gold scam, suspects the involvement of Pakistani-terrorist Dawood Ibrahim’s D-company in the case, reports Times Now.
According to the reports, the NIA suspects that a few accused in the Kerala gold smuggling case has links with the Dawood Ibrahim’s network. The NIA revealed the details of D-Company’s links in the case before a court in Ernakulam during the hearing of a bail plea of the seven accused in the case.
The NIA said that two accused Ramees KT and Sharafudheen had travelled to Tanzania and visited shops in the African country where guns are sold. In Tanzania, Ramees attempted to procure a licence for the diamond business. According to NIA, Ramees later smuggled gold to the UAE and from the UAE he bought gold back to Kerala.
“Tanzania and Dubai are the main places where the Dawood gang is active. In fact, D-company’s affairs in Tanzania are handled by an Indian named Firoz Oasis. We suspect Ramees’s links with D-company. Ramees was caught by the Customs in November 2019 for smuggling 13.22 mm bore rifles. This happened when the gold smuggling was taking place,” NIA counsel Arjun Ambalapatta submitted before the court.
Another accused is a PFI member, suspect in the hand-chopping case
The NIA counsel has also submitted that the another accused in the gold smuggling case – Mohammed Ali is a member of Popular Front of India and was charge-sheeted by the police in the Kerala hand-chopping case. However, he was later acquitted.
In its report, the NIA has alleged that Ali had formatted all the data on July 19th when his role had surfaced in the public domain. However, from the limited data that the NIA has retrieved from his mobile, it was found out that there were materials pertaining to the death of the Indian origin ISIS recruits, posters supporting the members of the banned organisation SIMI.
The NIA had also obtained images of paper slips depicting the details of huge transactions amounting in several lakhs. The NIA has now the evidence before the court stating that Mohammad Ali’s suspicious cash transactions need to be ascertained further through custodial interrogation and further forensic analysis.
Kerala gold scam: Accused Swapna Suresh says CM Vijayan had multiple ‘private meetings’ with UAE consul
Earlier on Wednesday, in a sensational disclosure, the prime accused in the Kerala gold smuggling case – Swapna Suresh had revealed to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that the Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had held multiple meetings with the Consul General of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2017.
The prime accused Swapna Suresh, in her statement to ED, had disclosed that it was Vijayan who had also “unofficially” recommended the name of his then principal secretary M Shivasankar as the state government’s official point of contact with the UAE’s consulate.
Swapna Suresh has also admitted before the probing agency that the private meetings between Vijayan and the UAE diplomats were held at CM Vijayan’s official residence in Thiruvananthapuram. Suresh was arrested by the NIA in July after she was found misusing fraudulently obtained diplomatic immunity papers to smuggle gold from UAE.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is investigating the case, had also informed the NIA Special Court in Kochi that Swapna Suresh had “good influence” in Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s office.
