Three held for smuggling forex

Three held for smuggling forex
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

HYDERABAD, DECEMBER 13: In a major haul, officials of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) seized foreign currency worth Rs 52.4 lakh from a passenger at the airport here on Saturday.

This was the biggest seizure of foreign exchange at the Hyderabad airport in recent past and three persons were arrested in connection with the incident. According to DRI Additional Director General P N Vittal Dass, the directorate received information that a passenger was boarding a flight to Singapore with foreign exchange concealed in his baggage.

After confirming the intelligence information, officials of DRI's Hyderabad unit identified the passenger who had already checked in his baggage and was waiting to board flight A1-424 to Singapore.

Officials immediately retrieved the checked-in baggage and found the currency concealed in it, stacked in such a manner that the scanning done by the airport staff did not reveal the concealment.

On interrogation, the passenger admitted that the foreign currency was sentto him by an operator at Chennai for taking it out of the country. In a swift follow-up action, DRI officers located the main operator in Chennai and the person who carried the currency from Chennai to here and handed it over to the passenger.