18 Sudanese women held at Mumbai airport for ‘smuggling’ in 16 kg gold worth Rs 10 crore

The foreigners were taken into custody. Their interrogation led DRI officials to a Masjid bunder based hotel AK Khidmat from where agency officials arrested one Indian member of the gold smuggling syndicate, identified as Suhail Poonawala, 23, a resident of Grant Road.

Suhail’s role was to collect the smuggled gold from these foreigners and hand it over to next chain in the racket. The smuggled gold would later be sold in Mumbai’s gold market, sources said.

DRI officials are further interrogating Suhail for more details on other members of the racket.
DRI sources believed that the accused foreigners are conduits acting as carriers for a promised commission. All the accused have been arrested under sections of Customs Act for for gold smuggling. Their passports have been seized by the central agency.

During the operation DRI also raided a premises and 1.46 kg of additional gold worth Rs 86 lakh, and foreign and Indian currency worth a total Rs 1.04 crore have been seized in the followers up action.

The arrested Sudanese nationals have been identified as— Yamn Abdin, Rehab Saeed, Ibrahim Ismail, Sharif Suliman, Raja Mohammed Ali, Soaad Saber, Sawsan Salih, Marvait Amain, T. Salih, Nadia Gnu, Fnu abakar, Magda Mohemdali, Fnu Ishag, Fnu Zainelabdin, Widad Khalil Asar, Lodan Ahmed Salih, Fnu Mashair Fadlala and Buthina Hussain.

The accused foreign nationals arrived in India via three flights of Air Arabia and Emirates airlines on Monday. The Sundanese women were instructed to hand over the gold to Suhail at the Masjid hotel.

The accused brought gold into India without declaring it, thus evading applicable customs duty on the imported gold. Sources said the accused women also got violent with DRI officials and did not cooperate in the probe.