KOCHI: The customs probe into the smuggling of gold through the diplomatic baggage revealed that accused Sandeep Nair used the identity card of a Mumbai-based company to reach Bengaluru during the lockdown with co-accused Swapna Suresh and her family after gold was seized at Thiruvananthapuram airport on July 5. The travel details, as revealed by Swapna’s husband Jayasankar, were included in the report as part of invoking COFEPOSA against Swapna and Sandeep.
According to Jayasankar, after the news regarding the seizure of gold from the diplomatic baggage on July 5 broke, Swapna reached her SI Tana apartment in Ambalamukku with her lawyer. The lawyer advised them to take clothes for some days and move out. Along with the lawyer, Swapna and family left for Varkala by 4.30pm as directed by Sandeep. Around 6.30pm, Sandeep joined them at Varkala underpass and they went to a resort, which doesn’t have a name. There, they decided to move to Kochi and the lawyer returned to Thiruvananthapuram.
Around 9pm, they left the resort and reached Ernakulam past midnight. They went straight to the house of a lawyer in Tripunithura where Swapna signed the ‘vakkalath’ to file an anticipatory bail plea at the Kerala High Court. Later, they took a room at a hotel near Cochin Shipyard around 1.30am on July 6. They stayed there till noon and left before lunch to a homestay in Edappally where they stayed till noon on July 7. Sandeep asked for the mobile phones of all and switched them off.
On July 7, they moved to a three-storey house. Jayasankar said he did not know the location but it was around 10km from Edappally in a marshy land. On July 9, they started from Ernakulam to Bengaluru by road. “They were stopped at the Tamil Nadu border near Coimbatore. Sandeep showed an ID card of a Mumbai-based company and obtained a pass from the kiosk at the border. The pass was taken to travel up to Maharashtra. With that pass, they reached till Karnataka border in Hosur.
Sandeep took an online pass from Seva Sindhu as transit passengers to Maharashtra. They reached Bengaluru at 1am on July 10,” the customs said in the report. They went straight to a hotel in Madiwala. Around 2pm on July 11, they went to another hotel but did not check in after finding the rooms small and uncomfortable. They went to another hotel named Ivory Plaza at BMT Layout around 6pm. Around 3.30pm on July 12, they moved to another hotel, Octave Studio, at Koramangala.
Around 5.30pm, Swapna and Sandeep were taken into custody when Jayasankar was out to buy medicines.According to the customs, Sandeep had connections in Mumbai and it was revealed that the identity card was of a company where he had worked several years back.