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COVER STORY: UZBEK CONNECTION
The Silk Route
The customs played an active role in a smuggling
racket by Uzbek couriers that could have compromised the nation's security
By Harinder Baweja
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FREQUENT FLIER : Olga made 68
trips to India in just 10 months |
They thought they
had it custom made. They did. From dollar wads to Uzbek women to yards
of Chinese silk, an entire system had been put in place, and it worked
each time flights landed from the CIS countries about 350 days a year.
The passengers-usually women-would alight with loads of baggage, sail
through customs and disappear into the bylanes of Paharganj, a congested
but flourishing locality adjoining the New Delhi railway station.
It worked smoothly even after the arrest on
August 28, 2000, of Olga Kozireva, the 27-year-old Uzbek who seemed to
spend more time in India than in Uzbekistan. The raids on the residences
of 48 officials posted at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on March
31, 2001, coincided with the raid on the house of their chief, B.P. Verma.
But this exercise should have taken place at least seven months earlier,
soon after Olga's arrest.
It was a case of collusion at the very top.
The information available about Olga's activities should have led to an
immediate investigation for she was intercepted at the airport with 27
bags of Chinese silk worth Rs 1.56 crore. Also, it wasn't her first trip
to India but the 68th in the 10 months between October 1999 and August
2000.
Olga, by her own admission, was a frequent visitor
since 1997. Often, she would board the flight to Karachi or Lahore in
Pakistan on the same day that she arrived in Delhi, and the CBI-the agency
investigating the case now-is wondering whether she carried more than
just textiles. Says a CBI official: "We cannot rule out the possibility
of her carrying drugs or even weapons." This is being investigated,
for the officials were apparently being paid $400-900 (Rs 18,400-41,400),
depending on the size of the bags, and silk is worth Rs 45 a metre. The
economics of smuggling don't appear entirely convincing.
Her links in Delhi are also suspect. Inquiries
reveal that she was working in tandem with two Afghan nationals who waited
outside the airport in trucks to ferry the loot. The CBI now says that
there was a three-way nexus between her, the Afghans and the customs officials.
All their cell phones would begin ringing incessantly the moment Olga
got off the plane, and records show that they were calling each other
on the given dates.
Verma, it seems, was presiding over a corrupt
empire, for the Customs Department even moved the high court to try and
scuttle the Olga investigation. Finally, N. Raja, director, vigilance,
customs and central excise, had to put down the facts of the case in a
letter to CBI chief K. Raghavan.
The extent to which the customs officials helped
Olga is quite brazen. Often, she would just walk out of the green channel,
and on rare occasions, pay for part of the goods, when she should have
been booked for unauthorised import of textiles. On the day of her arrest-she
fell into the net because the shift had changed-the manifested cargo weight
was 2,200 kg but on being weighed again it was found to be 4,375 kg.
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