DRI busts foreign currency racket at Mumbai airport, 8 held

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) busted a foreign currency smuggling racket at Mumbai International Airport by arresting eight persons who had concealed USD 410,000 (about Rs 2.75 crore) in laptop bags, officials said today.

They claimed that the foreign currency smuggling racket was one of the largest ever busted by the agency in recent times.

An official said that the interrogation of the accused had revealed that these persons had made over 100 trips in the past one year and had managed to smuggle over Rs 50 crore in foreign currency out of the country.

"In an overnight operation at Terminal-2 of the Mumbai International Airport, following a tip-off received from abroad, four passengers were intercepted as they were about to board two flights headed to Bangkok and Dubai," the official informed.

"During a search conducted on these four persons, a total of USD 410,000 (Rs 2.75 crore in rupee terms) was found concealed in four laptop bags," he said.

The DRI then picked up four other members of this syndicate, who had booked tickets for Goa, the official said.

"The eight have confessed to the crime and have told investigators that they had been operating this racket for about a year now," the official stated.

Explaining the modus operandi, the official said that a few members of the cartel would book themselves on domestic flights, through Air India, and a few others would book tickets on international flights, all within a space of a few hours.

"The domestic passengers would carry the foreign currency to be smuggled. They would hand over the money, carefully concealed in laptop bags, to their accomplices flying abroad. The handover was done at the food court at the airport's Terminal-2," he explained.

"The passengers who were to travel abroad had, by then, completed check-in formalities and would have passed through baggage screening," he said.

With about half an hour to an hour to go before boarding, the passengers booked on international flights would exchange their bags with the domestic passengers and proceed to the boarding gates, he said.

The racket, in which dollars were being illegally taken out of the country, was resulting in the weakening of the rupee, the official claimed.

The foreign currency was reportedly being used to pay for illegal items like smuggled gold, the official said, adding that further investigations into the racket were underway.