Why hawala operators dispatched postmen to ___ ?

Special acknowledgment goes to Rakesh Maria, the author of "Let Me Say it Now," on which this blog is based. The book is highly recommended for anyone interested to read about crime and investigation. We are highly indebted to the author for the valuable information that he has published in the book, without which the blog would not have taken shape.

On 25 September, 1994 a 28-year-old young man called Santosh Pandurang Patole standing outside the Navniram Cooperative Housing Society in Sector 3 was shot when a group of assailants opened fire on him.

Who was Santosh Pandurang Patole (herein referred to as ‘Patole’)?

He was not a businessman, builder or hotelier who would be the usual targets of such shootings. He was a postman!

However, he was not an ordinary postman going door to door, walking up apartment buildings to deliver envelops. Patole was attached to the foreign post office at the Sahar International Airport in its sorting department. He also owned a Maruti 800 car. Quite an achievement for a 28-year-old in the 1994, working in the post office.

Why would anyone dispatch a postman to death and that too by gunning him down?

Investigations revealed that Patole used to hobnob with members of the Dawood Ibrahim gang under Anees Ibhrahim, Aftab Batki and Abu Salem and was involved in their currency smuggling racket! The gang was smuggling Indian and foreign currency for hawala transactions through parcels sent by airmail.

At the International Airport, the parcels that need Customs scrutiny are segregated and taken to the General Post Office (GPO) located near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal in south Mumbai. The parcels are dispatched to their destinations only after the Customs checking at the GPO. Therefore, evading Customs check was possible only if some postal staff cooperated and connived with the gang en route.

The modus operandi of the gang was simple. They would corrupt postal staff and rope them in to tamper with the parcels. Parcels of foreign currency would be airmailed from cities abroad to Bombay. The details of their weight, description and address would be communicated in advance to the gang members in Bombay who in turn would relay this information on to their ‘friendly’ postmen who would be on duty when the parcels arrived.

On every successful delivery of the parcel, the ‘friendly’ postmen are rewarded for their service which would be twice their monthly payment that the Government pays for their service.

Patole was one such ‘cooperative’ postman.

How Patole worked –

• In the house with the help of his mother and brother, Patole would prepare identical parcels filled with things that are not offensive.

• He would then take them to the postal van carrying the currency parcels on its way to the GPO, identify the currency parcel and replace them with fake parcels which he has prepared at home.

• The fake parcel would then go to the GPO for the mandatory Customs check and the original parcels with foreign currency would be handed over to the gang.

If foreign currency was to be sent outside the country then the same process is carried out in a reverse order.

• Patole receives parcels of foreign currency from the gang.

• The fake parcel is sent to the GPO for the mandatory Customs check

• The currency parcels are then replaced with the identical Custom-checked parcels en route to the International Airport.

•  The currency parcels go out of the country undetected

The weight of the parcel would depend on the denomination of the notes being used. INR 2,000 note might weigh 2 grams approx, to smuggle INR 4,00,000 one would need 200 bank notes of INR 2,000 to be packaged as a parcel. The parcel would weigh 400 grams [200*2 = 400] and the weight of the parcel increases when a lower denomination note is used because there is an increase in the number of notes required to smuggle the same value of currency.

In addition to this when foreign currency is smuggled into India, the value increases due to the the exchange rate.

When high denomination notes are used, even slim wads can make huge amounts and just one such parcel missing parcel entails a huge loss. Patole’s time on Planet Earth was up when a parcel of foreign currency went missing and could not be delivered to the gang. The gang suspected that Patole had misappropriated the money. The henchmen questioned him rigorously, but he insisted that he had no clue whatsoever as to where it had gone.

Unlike organized trade where to detect a misappropriation of funds a audit is conducted, the underworld bosses were ruthless in these matters and misappropriation or cheating of any kind is totally unacceptable and not forgiven.

Patole was not a person considered irreplaceable in their smuggling racket and hence to communicate the message to others that such things would not be forgiven, the gang members were entrusted with the task of eliminating Patole.

Many postmen, eager to earn extra money, became entangled with hawala operators. Tragically, their involvement in this shadowy trade often led to fatal consequences due to financial misappropriations.

Now that you have read till here as a bonus we shall discuss how gold was smuggled by the gang. The idea is known as kachra peti or dustbin line. The idea was simple: a passenger would carry the gold packet in a chocolate box or a box like that of a tape recorder, radio or similar such items.

Just before the Customs clearance, the passenger would slyly drop the box in a dustbin on the way and move towards customs declaration.

The passenger would be trailed by an airport employee who would pick up the box, include it in his own belongings and carry it out of the airport when his duty hours ended that day. 

The entry and exit for an airport employee is separate and are not frisked by Customs officials.

The box would be later delivered to the gang  at the instructed address.

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