2 months ago
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In a large breakthrough successful Operation Numkhor – a nationwide crackdown connected the large-scale smuggling of premium second-hand vehicles and forged registration rackets involving Motor Vehicle section (MVD) officials – the Customs (Preventive) Commissionerate, Kochi, has arrested 5 suspects, 4 from Assam and 1 from West Bengal.
Among those taken into custody, with the enactment of Shillong Customs, is Dipak Patowary, District Transport Officer (DTO), Bongaigaon, Assam. The different accused are Biswadip Das of West Bengal, and Ayub Ali, Mostafa Ahmed, alias Rinku, and Jalal Mandal, each from Assam.
Investigators fishy that the racket involving Mr. Patowary facilitated the amerciable registration of astir 460 smuggled vehicles utilizing forged documents. These see foreign-made luxury cars and lorries, arsenic good arsenic Indian-made vehicles exported overseas and smuggled backmost into the state done Bhutan without outgo of Customs duty. The Assam Police person besides registered their arrests.
Mr. Das, believed to beryllium 1 of the cardinal masterminds, was apprehended adjacent the India-Bhutan borderline successful a coordinated cognition connected February 22. He was remanded to judicial custody and aboriginal brought to Kochi connected transit remand for further investigation.
“The Customs (Preventive) Commissionerate, Kochi, unsocial has seized 49 specified smuggled vehicles retired of a imaginable database of 200 identified crossed Kerala. Tracking the past of each conveyance is an elaborate process, and seizing each of them volition instrumentality time,” officials said.
Operation Numkhor has emerged arsenic 1 of the astir extended crackdowns connected conveyance smuggling and forged registrations, prompting different agencies, including the Central GST department, to initiate abstracted investigations. A caller study by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), tabled successful the Assam Assembly past month, revealed that 15,849 vehicles bearing identical chassis and motor numbers were registered crossed aggregate north-eastern States, exposing the standard of the racket.
“Multiple rackets are progressive successful smuggling vehicles and securing amerciable registrations utilizing forged documents. We person truthful acold identified 2 large networks — 1 based successful Coimbatore and different successful Assam. MVD officials are colluding with these rackets to tamper with the Parivahan website database,” Customs sources said.
The Kochi Commissionerate launched Operation Numkhor with Statewide raids connected September 23, 2025, including searches astatine the residences of fashionable movie actors specified arsenic Dulquer Salmaan and Prithviraj Sukumaran. On the archetypal time alone, 39 vehicles were seized, followed by different 10 successful the consequent days.
