Court grants bail to two accused in fake gold seizure case

After the 52 kg gold seized by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence turned out to be fake, a local court granted bail to the two arrested persons in the case here today.
Additional Metropolitan Magistrate U M Bhatt granted bail to the two accused persons, relying on a forensic report which suggested that the seized gold primarily consisted of lead and copper.
According to the report prepared by K J Golania of the Directorate of Forensic Sciences (DFS) of Gandhinagar, the metal recovered was not gold.
"The seized metal, which is in the form of bars, only had a coating of gold which is merely 1.1 per cent to 4.4 per cent of the total weight of each bar," said the report placed before the court yesterday.

On April 26, the DRI had seized 52 kg of what it thought was gold from Surender Singh Dagar (39) of Delhi and Saurabh Sarjit Saharan (37) of Guragaon from a hotel here.
The agency had then claimed that it had recovered 52 gold bars which had markings of 'Kaloti Dubai' as well as 'Al-Etihad Gold' and were of .995 purity.
Soon after their arrest, the two persons moved a bail plea stating that they had been framed in a wrong case of alleged smuggling and stressed that the recovered item was not gold.
Last week, the court had directed the probe agency to get the purity of gold tested.