Five people from West Bengal and Assam have been arrested in connection with smuggling of luxury used cars from Bhutan, officials said on Saturday.
In a statement, Customs said that the arrested persons are Biswadeb Das from Jaigaon in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, Deepak Patwari from Paltanbazar in Kamrup district, Ayub Ali from Jojigaon in Bongaigaon district, MD Mustafa Ahmed from Poladmari in Jalpaiguri district, and Jalal Mandal from Chapar in Dhubri district. All four belong to Assam.
Customs officials said Patwari was a transport official in Assam’s Bongaigaon district.
The arrests were made after a large-scale investigation conducted in Assam and West Bengal with the help of police and customs formations in the northeastern states, officials said.
“During an investigation by the Assam Police, it was found that they had registered 460 such vehicles using forged documents. The vehicles include foreign-made vehicles as well as Indian-made vehicles that were exported earlier and were later smuggled into the country without paying customs duty. They were then registered illegally using forged documents,” the Customs said.
The Kochi Customs Commissioner launched ‘Operation Nomkhor’ last year after discovering that used vehicles, mostly luxury SUVs from Bhutan, were being illegally smuggled into India, re-registered in different states, and sold to buyers who claimed they were imported legally.
Last year, customs seized several vehicles, including some belonging to film actors in Kerala, which were sold to them by people involved in illegal smuggling of vehicles from Bhutan.
The Customs statement said that Das, who was arrested on February 22 and is an employee of a major IT company, was the mastermind behind the smuggling of vehicles from Bhutan.
He was arrested near the Indo-Bhutan border and was later transferred to Kochi on a transit warrant before being remanded in judicial custody.
The officials said that Customs will soon approach the court to request the detention of the arrested persons for further investigations.
According to Customs, a recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India found that 15,849 vehicles with the same chassis and engine numbers were registered in multiple northeastern states.
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