Police bust hawala deal, recover 2.6cr, 8 arrested, 1 on run

Noida: Police on Friday busted a group of 9 that was allegedly meeting to facilitate a hawala deal, arresting eight of them and recovering Rs 1.68 crore from their possession. Later in the day, they traced another Rs 95 lakh linked to the accused. The Income Tax department has been roped in to investigate the case.
The police station in Sector 58 got a tipoff about the hawala deal that was planned to be carried out in Sector 55. “Nine people in two cars, including a taxi, were spotted. We managed to nab eight of them while one managed to flee. We recovered three bags of cash amounting to Rs 1.68 crore from the private car,” said Vivek Trivedi, SHO, Sector 58 police station.
During interrogation, the accused gave away more details about their syndicate, eventually leading a team of Noida Police to a raid in Old Delhi, where they recovered another Rs 95 lakh on Friday evening.
“The private car had a ‘press’ sticker on it and the accused said they were using it to avoid police arrest. The deals were often done using that car and a part of the commission was given to the owner of a media house. All the accused have been in the hawala business for the past 4-5 years,” Trivedi said.
Police officials part of the investigation said that the accused are from across India and the may be part of a larger syndicate. “All these people had different roles and used to get a huge commission,” the official added. Cops said the IT department has now taken custody of the accused to further investigate the case.
Those arrested are: Jayanti Bhai from Ahmedabad, Sandip Sharma from Delhi, Vinay Kumar from Delhi, Abhijeet Hazra from West Bengal, Rohit Jain from Noida Sector-56, Vipul from Delhi, Minesh Shah from Mumbai and Anuj from Indore. The suspect who escaped is Raja Maurya. They have been booked under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 120B (criminal conspiracy), among others of the IPC.