1.02 crore hawala money seized; 4 held

Hyderabad: The Central Zone Task Force officials of the Hyderabad Commissionerate on Tuesday night hours busted an illegal hawala money transfer racket at Padmaja Landmark in Khairatabad and arrested four persons.

The police seized Rs 1.02 crore net cash, two bikes and five cell phones from the possession of the accused. On credible information, the Task Force officials raided the place and arrested Jitendar Nath (28), Suresh Sharma (29) of Rajasthan G Lakshmi Narayana Hema Sundaram (34) and B Bala Krishna (38) belongs to Andhra Pradesh.

According to police, Jitendar who is a native of Rajasthan and migrated to Hyderabad and is residing along with his family at Gyanbagh Colony. As his elder brother is running hawala business from Delhi he also came across several hawala money transfer agents in India and started the hawala business from Begum bazar, Gyanbagh Colony, Gujarati Galli and Koti with the help of his friend Suresh Sharma. Since then, he has been organising illegal Hawala money transfer business clandestinely and supplying money on commission basis at the rate of 0.6 per cent to 0.8 per cent.

On enquiry, Jitendar Nath confessed that he is delivering the said amount to the accountants of CR Associates at Potladurthy in Kadapa as per the instructions of Managing Director of CR Associates, Charan Tej Naidu, to provide the salaries to his company labour.

He used to collect the hawala money from various persons with the help of Suresh Sharma on the instructions of his elder brother and send the hawala amount to Delhi and other places. The apprehended four along with seized cash were handed over to Income Tax Department for further investigation.