Hyderabad: Police seize Rs 97 lakh from hawala operators

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Task Force along with the Mahankali police busted an illegal ‘hawala’ money transfer racket and nabbed two persons at RP Road late night on Wednesday. Officials seized Rs 97 lakh of ‘hawala’ money from them.

The arrested persons were identified as Mohammed Siddiq Ahmed, owner of Ahmed Tours and Travels and Western Union business, and Mohammed Muneer, an Arabic tutor. Both are residents of Hussaini Alam. Ahmed was doing hawala business for commission while Muneer was helping him in transporting the money, police said.

According to the Task Force, Ahmed had come into contact with a hawala operator identified as Faheem, a realtor, five months ago and agreed to work for him for a commission.

“During the business, he developed contacts with other illegal hawala brokers across India, particularly in metropolitan cities and used to



communicate with them through WhatsApp by maintaining a code of identification with unique currency serial numbers on currency notes,” police said.

Faheem, an active hawala operator, used to guide Ahmed over phone and instruct him from where to collect the cash and the place and person to whom the cash had to be delivered. Recently, Ahmed engaged Muneer as the sub-agent on a commission basis for doing the transportation.

Police said as per their plan, late night on Wednesday Faheem instructed the duo to collect the hawala money from one Rajesh at SP Road in Secunderabad to further hand it over to a party. The duo reached SP Road, collected the cash bag from Rajesh and were proceeding towards RP Road when they were caught by the Task Force team. The hawala money and a bike was seized from them.

They were handed over to the Mahankali police for further action.