An Indian flight attendant with Jet Airways was allegedly caught carrying 482,000 US dollars when the authorities checked her baggage on Sunday.
25-year-old Deveshi Kulshreshtha , the Jet Airways flight attendant was intercepted when she had boarded a plane that was scheduled to take off for Hong Kong on early Sunday morning.
"During examination of her checked in and hand baggage, USD 480,200 wrapped in aluminium foil having a market value of Rs 3.25 crore, has been recovered," the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, said.
NDTV reports she was tasked to deliver the money in Hong Kong. This was her eighth trip and she was paid Rs. 1 lakh for each trip, according to the DRI.
The authorities say she was allegedly hand in gloves with a hawala operator, Amit Malhotra for laundering thousands of dollars out of the country, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) said on Monday.
The Delhi-based Malhotra used crew members for smuggling foreign currency.
The official claimed that Malhotra would collect money from some bullion dealers in Delhi and send it to select foreign destinations using a flight attendant. The money was being used for purchasing gold abroad and later sent to India illegally, the official said.
"Our investigations have shown that there is a larger international hawala racket which was operating and the arrest of Deveshi Kulshrestha is just a small cog in the wheel," a senior official of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence told NDTV.
The duo was arrested by the DRI and has been sent to two-day judicial custody.
