Hair smuggling: Enforcement Directorate conducts searches at various locations

Hyderabad: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted search operations on Wednesday and Thursday last week under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA)-2002 at multiple locations spread from Hyderabad to Aizwal and further up to Myanmar border town of Champai in Mizoram. These searches were conducted in money laundering investigation pertaining to smuggling of raw human hair […]

Hyderabad: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted search operations on Wednesday and Thursday last week under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA)-2002 at multiple locations spread from Hyderabad to Aizwal and further up to Myanmar border town of Champai in Mizoram.

These searches were conducted in money laundering investigation pertaining to smuggling of raw human hair from India to Myanmar through illegal land routes via Mizoram generating huge cash, according to a press release.

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A large part of cash thus generated was used for making illegal compensatory payments through unauthorised channels for smuggled hair and under-valued exports of human hair from entities spread across India.

The ED initiated a money-laundering investigation after it came across large hawala payments to local hair traders in the fund trail investigation of online Chinese betting mobile applications.

Subsequently, based on ED’s complaint, the Central Crime Station (CCS) of Hyderabad Police registered a fresh FIR under various Sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) wherein, it was alleged that one Nayla Family Exports Private Limited (Director Md Ibrahim Patel) exported human hair by using benami Import Export Code (IEC) of multiple local proprietary firms.

A large scale domestic sales of raw human hair were taking place from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to Guwahati and Kolkata. All this domestically sold hair was ultimately finding its way to China via Myanmar and sale proceeds were surprisingly being received from shell bank accounts in Mizoram.

The ED conducted fund trail investigation and zeroed in on shell entities – St Mary’s Gem Industries Champai, Sun Moon Human Hair Champai and Thari Enterprises Aizwal and based in Mizoram which were taking in hundreds of crores of cash deposits and then remitting the deposited amount to several hair merchants spread across India.

One Lucas Thangmangliana (resident of remote Champai District) is the chief facilitator of this mammoth hawala operation. The ED has seized various incriminating documents, handwritten diaries, digital devices and also recovered cash of Rs 1.20 crore.

The ED has identified various suspicious bank accounts which were being used for huge cash deposits. Accordingly, the ED has issued freezing order under PMLA against such 139 bank accounts. Statements of bankers and account holders are being recorded, the release added.

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