Rs 1.4 cr still missing from stolen Rs 3.5 cr; Details emerge on lavish spending, kodakara theft case, kerala, murder, bjp, kodakara hawala money, kerala police, bjp kerala

According to the chargesheet, the accused allegedly used Rs 30.29 to buy gold for family members, which was seized by the police.

Following the 2021 theft, the accused allegedly stayed in luxury accommodation and traveled in high-end vehicles.

Meanwhile, some of the accused allegedly distributed money to needy people and used it to pay off arrears, making recovery impossible.

According to the chargesheet, after dividing the loot, the 15th accused, Shigil, along with the 22nd accused, Rashid, traveled to Kullu, Manali, Chennai and Tirupati. Further, the 13th accused, Abdulsalam, along with the 16th and 17th accused, Rasheed and Rauf, remained in Kodagu, Karnataka.

The investigation also revealed that the third accused, Ranjith, gave Rs 17 lakh from his share to his wife, Deepti, while the 10th accused, Shahid, gave Rs 10 lakh to his wife, Jinsha, of which Rs 9 lakh were given to Jinsha. grandmother. The police did not recover the unspent amounts.

The Kodakara heist took place three days before the state election on 6 April 2021. In the early hours of 3 April, a group of people broke into a car (KL-56G 6789) blocking it from both sides using two cars. Subsequently, the applicant, who is the driver of the car, and his friend were dragged from the car and manhandled. A sum of Rs 25 crore and the car, worth eight lakh rupees, were stolen in the incident.

Soon after the incident, the driver of the vehicle, Shamjeer Shamsudeen, informed Dharmarajan, who is named by the police as a hawala agent in the charge sheet, about the robbery. A day after the election, Shamjeer Shamsudeen complained at the Kodakara police station. Later, the investigation found that the amount stolen was not 25 lei, but 3.5 million lei. The police also allege that the money was obtained illegally from Bengaluru through the hawala agent to cover the BJP’s expenses in the state polls.

However, the police could not trace Rs 1.47 crore out of the Rs 3.5 crore that was looted. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) has arrested 22 people and there are 219 witnesses in the case, including important BJP leaders. However, none of the BJP leaders were named in the chargesheet filed by the SIT in the Thrissur Sessions Court. The police failed to register a case against the BJP leaders as ‘hawala business’ was not their purview.

At this time, various political party leaders and social activists approached the ED to intervene and register a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. However, the ED did not respond to the requests. Usually ED takes up such cases involving crores of rupees if there is a main offense (a case registered by any law enforcement agency).