Mangalore : The city crime branch police busted a Hawala racket on Saturday evening at Mangalore. Led by the Inspector Venkatesh Prasanna and police commissioner Manish Karbikar, a massive raid operation was carried out on a house at Kodialguttu.

The police arrested 27 persons and seized Rs 78,69,850 in cash from the house.

It was reported that the concerned house was rented by a Gujarati person named Suresh Kumar. He and his associates were involved in a racket business, which means transferring of huge sum of money from the people who had black money or wanted to avoid taxes.

The operation of hawala worked such that suresh and his associates who were spread across various places would have stock money. When a person wanted to transfer amount to some place, he would come to this house and deliver that amount here. And then the associate in the concerned place would do the actual transfer using the stocked money. The actual money which was paid at house would go to Suresh. Thus the money would reach its concerned destination within a very short span of time, like half an hour.

Rs 7,000 for every lakh were charged as commission.

The hawala operations did not maintain any records and it was entirely based on trust.

With these kinds of rackets, the public could easily transfer their money in short time, also escaping the tax fixed by the government.

After keeping a keen watch for seven days continuously, the police raided the house on Saturday at around 4pm. It was known that the police had received prior information regarding the activities being carried out here.



The police caught all the people who had come to that house with money on that day. Altogether 27 persons were caught; some had come with the cash of 20 lakhs, others with 25 lakhs and so on.

Also, 27 mobile phones, 17 bikes, two hawala jackets were recovered along with the cash amount of around Rs. 78 lakhs.

The hawala business used to run under the name of Patel Ashish Kumar Kanthilal and Co., Ahmedabad.

The accused have been chargeded under Section 41 (d) of IPC and other sections.

CCB inspector Venkatesh Prasanna said that the police had suspected that the money brought into this house was being used for terrorism. But, no such activity was taking place and the business was being carried out only to escape tax and hide black money.