Mumbai: Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) busted a gold smuggling racket and arrested two ‘couriers’ with 5kg of gold worth nearly Rs 10 crore in Kalbadevi on Sunday.Based on a tipoff, DRI’s Mumbai unit laid a trap at Kalbadevi’s Dhanji Street and caught Swapnil Jadhav and Shreyas Salunkhe, who had 13 pieces of melted gold bars wrapped in newspapers. Experts confirmed they were gold. The two failed to produce any legal document for it. Officials conducted searches of an office, where they found equipment used for melting, cutting and polishing gold. They also recovered Indian currency notes, which they suspect were used as tokens to deliver and receive gold and cash using hawala channels.Jadhav and Salunkhe were produced in court. Their advocate, Ravi Hirani, told the court that they had been framed and that the gold did not belong to them.
