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Police involvement confirmed in currency smuggling

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KATHMANDU, Oct 8: CCTV footage and telephone call details has proved that Indian national Binod Kumar Soni, who was arrested on Saturday with nine different foreign currencies totaling Rs 12.4 million from Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA), was assisted by a head constable to transport the illegal money to the Fly Dubai Aircraft.



Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Narayan Bastakoti, who is also the chief of police in TIA, told Republica that Soni was assisted by a Head Constable Sovit Karki, who had joined TIA two and half months ago. [break]



DIG Bastakoti claimed that Karki had hidden the money in his uniform and handed over the money to Soni who was waiting in the toilet of sterile-hall of TIA evading security checks. He said, “Indian citizen Soni has accepted that he was helped by a police constable working at TIA so we are in search of Sovit who has been absconding since the last two days.”



Sources said that it was impossible for a common police officer to be involved in such crimes without the support or direction of top level officers.



However DIG Bastakoti criticized the source and said, “It´s a big place and about five hundred police officers works in here and it´s not easy to inspect each and every officers.” He added, “I won´t go with rumors but we are sure that police inspection will be made tighter keeping in mind the zero tolerance policy against corruption.”



Police on Saturday had formed a probe panel under the leadership of DIG Parshuram Khatri to prepare a report on the incident within one week. The illegal currencies was seized when a man, Milan KC called the duty officer of TIA claiming that Fly Dubai Aircraft had a bomb which was followed by a police check of the aircraft.



Among the seized currencies were 41,700 euro, 8,560 Swiss francs, 4,910 UK pounds sterling, 56,150 Qatari riyal, 1,84,900 Saudi riyal, 18,500 UAE dirham, 409 Omani riyal, 1,887 Kuwaiti dinar and 405 Bahrain dinar totaling Rs 12.4 million.



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