Three senior citizens held for smuggling foreign currencies worth Rs36 lakh

The Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) of Customs on Friday arrested thee persons, including a NRI couple, for allegedly attempting to smuggle foreign currencies worth Rs36 lakh to Singapore.

Lalchand Vaswani, 78, and his wife Pushpa, 71, holding Singapore passports and Choith Harcha-ndani, 49, an Indian passport

holder, were arrested under the  Customs Act 1962 and Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) 1999. An AIU officer informed that they recovered US Dollars 30,600, Singapore Dollars 61,760 and Euro 2,500 from the couple.

However, the trio were released on a bail of Rs1.5 lakh each by the Esplanade court, defence lawyer Ravi Hirani said and added that his clients were falsely implicated in the case.

AIU officials intercepted three passengers at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport while they were on their way to board the Singapore Airlines flight. A thorough search of each of them and examination of their checked-in baggage resulted in the recovery of the foreign currencies.

During questioning, the Vaswani couple stated that the currencies did not belong to them. The currencies and the new readymade garments found in their luggage were actually given to them by Harchandani. Harchandani had promised them that he would pay Rs4,000 to the Vaswani couple for carrying the new readymade garments and would also pay 50 paise per dollar for the foreign currencies they were carrying to Singapore.

The couple further revealed that they did not bring any currency while coming to India nor did they file any currency declaration form with Customs while arriving in India last month.

Harchandani, a resident of Ulhasnagar, also agreed that all foreign currencies belonged to him and he did not possess legal documents for the export of these foreign currencies. The AIU officer informed that Harchandani was a frequent traveller and allegedly a habitual offender. He was earlier arrested on March 27, 2007, by customs for attempting to smuggle foreign currencies worth Rs38 lakh. He had visited Singapore 12 times in the last four months, between May 2009 and August 2009.