Gold Smuggling In Kerala Is Turing Into Mafia Style Deadly Gang Wars On The Streets

On May 19, Abdul Jaleel, a native of Agali, in Palakkad District of Kerala was admitted to a hospital by three men who claimed that they found him injured on the roadside.

He died in the hospital the same night, four days after the 42-year-old landed in India from Saudi Arabia, where he was working as a driver for 10 years.

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Instead of Kozhikode or Kannur international airports, which were closer to his home Jaleel travelled on a flight to Kochi.

Before taking the flight, Jaleel had told his family not to come to Kochi to pick him up and that he would reach home in a friend's car.

But for the next two days, the family did not hear from Jaleel after which they approached the police.

Two days later on May 19, he was 'found injured on the roadside' in Perintalmanna in Malappuram District and died shortly after that in hospital.

To the utter shock of the family whose only breadwinner was Jaleel, the police told them that their son was a gold carrier and that he was abducted and tortured by the smugglers for days before he died.

In the following days, the Kerala Police arrested a total of seven people including Yahiya Mohammed, the man who took the injured Jaleel to the hospital.

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According to the Police, Yahiya is the kingpin of a gold smuggling racket and his gang in the middle-east had given 1.2 kgs of the yellow metal to Jaleel, which he was supposed to hand over to someone in Kochi airport.

But for some reason, the gold never reached the designated person in Kochi and the gang abducted Jaleel to get it back.

It is still unclear if Jaleel discarded the gold at the airport in the fear of getting caught by the Customs officials or if he sold it to a rival gang.

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This was the latest in a growing list of crimes being reported in Kerala around gold smuggling.

While gold smuggling from the middle east to Kerala is not anything new, how the gangs are operating now has even left many in the Police stunned.

How unsuspecting ordinary passengers become gold carriers

Gold smuggling to Kerala is mostly done through carriers, who have no criminal history and are working in the middle east.

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Gang members in the middle-east identify potential carriers - people like Jaleel who are low-income workers, and who are planning to visit their loved ones in Kerala.

The gangs then offer them flight tickets and at times some additional cash in exchange for carrying the gold, most of the time hidden inside their body.

For many people like Jaleel, the Rs 50,000 to one lakh offer is too good to turn down and they become gold carriers.

Once someone agrees to become a gold carrier, his or her details including photos, contact number, local address, names of relatives, etc are provided to the gang members in Kerala who are to collect the smuggled goods.

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Gangs that fight for the smuggled gold

However, there are multiple gangs that are involved in gold smuggling to Kerala and one group trying to get its hands on another's 'consignment' is on the increase and that is where the gang war often spills into the street.

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This is done in multiple ways - one is the carriers themselves inform a rival gang that they are carrying a certain amount of gold, which they are ready to give them for an amount higher than the original gang gave.

Another method is - a rival group that also knows that a certain passenger coming out of the airport is a gold carrier and abducts him or her before the gang which it was originally meant for can get it.

And the deadliest is when the vehicle of a gang leaving the airport with the smuggled gold is waylaid and attacked by a rival.

When the fight for gold spills blood on the road

In June 2021, such an incident happened in Ramanattukara in Kozhikode District.

Five people travelling in an SUV were killed after their vehicle was involved in a high-speed collision with a truck.

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Initially, it was deemed as a regular road accident, but later doubts began emerging as the SUV which was supposedly travelling from Kozhikode airport to Cherpulassery had no business in Ramanattukara where the accident took place.

Later it emerged that three different gangs were trying to get their hands on the same smuggled gold, which lead to a high-speed chase on the road and subsequently the accident.

In this case, the carrier himself had reportedly leaked the information to the rival gangs.

Kerala's dark history of gold smuggling

Gold smuggling in Kerala which got its start through the hawala networks operating from the middle east has now grown to eclipse it.

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The most high profile among them remains the gold smuggling using diplomatic baggage sent to the UAE Embassy which was caught in July 2020.

Among the four international airports in Kerala, Kozhikode is believed to be the hub of gold smuggling.

Between April 2021 and March 2022, more than 200 kgs of smuggled gold were seized by the authorities at Kozhikode Airport.

This, the authorities admit, is just the tip of the iceberg as much more carriers get away with the gold than the number of those getting caught almost on a daily basis.

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