P.V. Anvar to move Kerala High Court for judicial probe into contraband gold interceptions by plainclothes police squads

LDF legislator P.V. Anvar seeks Kerala High Court-monitored probe into gold smuggling allegations, faces threats, vows to continue public service.

Alienated Left Democratic Front (LDF) Independent legislator P. V. Anvar said he would move the Kerala High Court for a serving judge-monitored investigation into his accusation that the State’s top law enforcement, in alleged connivance with Air Customs, employed plainclothes squad to interdict gold carriers outside the Karipur airport for their contraband. 

Speaking to reporters in Malappuram on Friday (September 27, 2024), Mr. Anvar demanded that the High Court investigate the 188 gold smuggling cases registered by the District Anti-Narcotics Special Action Force (DANSAF) when Sujith Das, IPS, was District Police Chief in Malappuram. 

He said he would lead a media delegation to Kondotty to identify the prime properties acquired by an appraiser contracted by the police and the Customs to testify to the purity and quantity of the contraband confiscated by DANSAF from gold carriers. 

Last week, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan defended the police action by stating that the process of smelting and purifying confiscated contraband gold, smuggled into Kerala airport in varied forms, caused a slight and legally permissible discrepancy in weight. 

Mr. Anvar said the police had no legal business smelting and refining intercepted contraband gold. The law required the police to produce the contraband in court or hand it over to the Customs.

He also alleged that the DANSAF team worked with corrupt Customs officials to intercept gold carriers away from the unblinking eyes of airport surveillance cameras.

“Airport scanners will alert Customs enforcers to the contraband gold concealed in body cavities, clothes or luggage by smugglers flying in from the Gulf. Instead of intercepting the carriers in the Customs hall, the check post officials will alert the plainclothes squads waiting outside the airport. The squads will waylay the carriers, seize the contraband, understate its weight and purity and share the spoils with their Customs backers”, he said.