Arrest of two persons raises fears:

Has LTTE stepped up smuggling and regrouping in Tamil Nadu?

The arrest in Tamil Nadu of two persons with LTTE links over gold smuggling has raised fears in the State that the LTTE has stepped up smuggling and regrouping.

Two people were arrested on Friday night in India when they attempted to smuggle about 20kg of gold from Sri Lanka, the Times of India reported. In another incident, a 45-year-old woman was taken into custody by Trichy Customs officials while trying to smuggle 1.2 kg of gold bars from Sri Lanka.

The two cases of attempted gold smuggling from Sri Lanka to Tamil Nadu have alerted Customs officials to review security along the coastline in Nagapattinam, particularly highly sensitive places such as Kodiakadu, Kodiakarai and Velankanni.

The two persons, S Anand (28) and Kodiakarai Vedayan (26), were arrested at the Vedaranyam check post while trying to smuggle 156 gold bars, valued at Rs 2.5 crore that were allegedly transported from Sri Lanka by sea to Kodiakarai (Point Calimere) in Nagapattinam district.

Acting on a tip off, the Nagapattinam Customs officials mounted their vigilance at the 11-odd check posts in the Nagapattinam coastal belt. One of the vehicles, which was intercepted at a check-post near Velankanni was found to contain the gold bars.

Intensive investigations revealed that the two arrested persons, were associated with persons who allegedly had links with some of the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The smuggling activity that was at its peak during the LTTE heydays, have resumed in recent times with renewed vigour after a gap of 15 years, perhaps because interested parties are transporting the wealth from Sri Lanka to their supporters in Tamil Nadu, said another officer who did not wish to be named.

The police and Customs tightened investigations after they learnt that Anand was none other than the son of Kodiakarai Shanmugam, who had been arrested for the crime of sheltering some of the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, and who later committed suicide in police custody.In the second incident, K Chandra (45) of Pudukottai was arrested when she tried to smuggle the gold bars valued at Rs. 3 million into the city.

Customs officials said the woman, who landed in Trichy from Colombo on a SriLankan Airlines flight on Thursday, had concealed the gold bars in her sari. She has been remanded to judicial custody after the air intelligence filed a case against her.(Air Intelligence) at Tiruchirappalli airport, Earnest Ravi said the gold bars bore the ‘Swiss’ mark and as such Sri Lanka was only used as a conduit point as the smugglers think the island nation is less strict.

Customs officials said that it was common knowledge that the gold bars did not originate from Sri Lanka and the international smuggling ring used Kuruvis (paid transporters) from southern coastal towns for the bigger job now, as the security along the coast was slackening after the LTTE was decimated by the Sri Lankan Army.