Thai Areca Nut Smuggling Probe: ED Raids 16 Locations Across Assam, Bengal

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: In a crackdown on the smuggling syndicate of Thai areca nuts and money laundering, officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided several places in Assam and West Bengal today.

Official sources said that the ED is conducting searches at 16 locations across Assam and West Bengal in connection with its money-laundering probe into a syndicate allegedly smuggling foreign-origin areca nuts into India through the Indo-Myanmar border.

Officials raided premises linked to Siliguri transporter Dhiraj Ghosh and his associates Binoy Barman and Sandeep Baid, Guwahati logistics firms Jai Karni Tradings Pvt Ltd and Purvottar Agro Pvt Ltd, and businessman Navratan Baid, among others.

ED sources said the syndicate brought Indonesian and Thai areca nut into Mizoram via Myanmar, using local residents as front proprietors of firms through which hundreds of crores were routed, before moving the consignments to gutka and pan masala manufacturers in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra on forged GST and transport documents. A Siliguri-based syndicate is alleged to have collected monthly payments from truckers in exchange for tokens guaranteeing unchecked passage from the Assam border through Bengal and Bihar.

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