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KOLKATA: Five days after the Special Task Force (STF) of the Kolkata Police arrested a East Burdwan resident and seized over 5 kg heroin worth Rs 25.1 crore in the international market, it has seized cash worth Rs 61 lakh that was used to procure drugs through hawala channels.
“We have questioned the accused Sunul Howlader and he led us to the office of a trader at Jorasanko from where we seized the huge amount of unaccounted cash. Howlader has accepted that this money was deposited by him in the recent past at Khan’s office as payment of the narcotic drug that he peddled,” said DC (STF) Aparajita Rai. The cops are ascertaining if the unaccounted cash was to be used for electoral purposes.
“The trader is not directly related to the drug case. Hawala or money laundering is not something that we can investigate on our own. We have reported about the trader to all concerned departments, including the Income Tax department,” said DC Rai. While the link between hawala money and drug chains are common, it is not always that cops carry out such seizures.
The fresh seizures by the STF has now led to cops recovering as much as Rs 1.31 crores of unaccounted money from central Kolkata in the run up to the assembly polls. So far, seven persons have been arrested with the unaccounted money.
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