ED finds hawala nexus in smuggling of human hair, betel nuts across India-Myanmar-China

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate has unearthed a hawala nexus that used money earned from smuggling of human hair from India to China and other countries to carry out illegal betel nut trade from Myanmar and vice-versa, officials said on Tuesday.

The nexus came to light during a money laundering probe into the smuggling of human hair.

The federal probe agency filed a chargesheet in August last year before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Nampally, Hyderabad, bringing on record evidence of this purported modus operandi.

The court took cognisance of this PMLA prosecution complaint, filed against Lucas Thangmangliana, a resident of the Champhai district of Mizoram, Hyderabad-based Nayla Family Exports Pvt. Ltd. and 16 others, on March 1, the ED said in a statement issued on Monday.

The ED’s money laundering case stems from an FIR filed by the Hyderabad Police against Nayla Family Exports Pvt. Ltd. and others.

The police pressed charges of using “benami” Import Export Codes (IEC) against the company for exporting human hair, cheating by impersonation, using forged documents and smuggling of human hair to Myanmar, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China from the Hyderabad airport and through land routes along the international India-Myanmar border in Mizoram, according to the ED.

The probe found, the agency claimed, that Lucas Thangmangliana arranged illegal border crossings for the smuggling of human hair and fertilisers from India to Myanmar through the international border in Mizoram.