Bengal: ED arrests four persons over hawala racket with B’desh links

Kolkata, Nov 13 (IANS) Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Wednesday that they have arrested four persons in connection with a hawala racket having Bangladeshi links.

ED said that among the four arrested, two are Indian citizens and the other two are Bangladeshi nationals.

“They all have been arrested in Kolkata and ED is taking transit remand to bring all of them to Ranchi, Jharkhand. These arrests were made by ED after extensive searches conducted at 17 locations under PMLA, 2002, in Jharkhand and West Bengal,” the statement issued by ED read.

The two Bangladeshi nationals who have been arrested by the ED are Ronny Mondal and Sameer Chowdhary, while the two Indian nationals are Pintu Halder and Pinki Basu.

ED said Mondal, Chowdhary and Halder were arrested on Tuesday while Basu was arrested on Tuesday.

“During the search operations, various incriminating items including fake Aadhaars, forged passports, illegal arms, immovable property documents, cash, jewellery, printing papers, printing machines, and blank proformas used for forging Aadhaar have been recovered,” the statement from ED read.

On Tuesday, ED officials, accompanied by the central armed police forces (CAPF) personnel conducted marathon raids and search operations at 12 locations in West Bengal in connection to the hawala scam stretched over West Bengal and Jharkhand and having links with Bangladesh.

Of the 12 places where ED officials conducted raid and search operations included the residence of a woman at Madhyamgram in North 24 Parganas district against whom a case was registered at Ranchi.

It is learnt that the woman concerned got some women from neighbouring Bangladesh illegally immigrated to West Bengal after luring them with promises of employment and then got them involved in the inter-state hawala racket, mainly involving West Bengal and Jharkhand.

These Bangladeshi women were also provided with fake documents like Aadhaar cards with Hindu names. A couple of those Bangladeshi women, sources added, managed to escape to Ranchi and filed a complaint at a local police station there.

Since “hawala trading” comes under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the ED suo motu took up the matter after filing an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR).

Preliminary investigation has revealed that a portion of the money routed through the hawala passage was also invested in the transport business.

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