Five Arrested Near Vijayawada as Authorities Bust Cross-State Gold Smuggling Racket

UPDATE - follow-up to Gold smuggled from Bangladesh seized near Vijayawada; five arrested: Five people are now in custody following a multi-state operation that uncovered an illegal gold network moving foreign metal from Bangladesh through Kolkata into Telangana. Officers from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence caught the suspects in two separate locations outside Vijayawada.

Seizures

Investigators first stopped a utility vehicle near the city limits. Inside a hidden compartment, they found sixty thousand US dollars and twenty-one thousand five hundred Euros in foreign cash. The two men inside confessed they had just dropped off a batch of smuggled gold and were moving the cash made from selling it. Building on these details, teams tracked a public bus heading to Hyderabad and stopped it at a toll booth. They checked the passengers and found three foreign gold bars weighing a combined 3,147.1 grams. The carriers had tied these bars in pouches around their waists to hide them.

Action Taken

All five individuals were taken into custody and presented before a local magistrate, who sent them to judicial jail. The total worth of the recovered gold and foreign money stands at five point eighty-four crore rupees. Officials from the Hyderabad and Vijayawada regional units are digging deeper to find the rest of the gang members involved in moving the illegal items and managing the money.

Context

Smuggling syndicates frequently use public transport and hidden vehicle compartments to bypass highway checkpoints between major cities. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence regularly monitors transit routes across state borders to track down illegal financial flows and contraband movement.