On June 29, Special Operations Group (SOG) Guwahati The Police Commissionerate and Latasil police station raided a rented house in Kharghuli area of the city and recovered about 37 kg of pure, 24 carat gold bars. ₹55 crores. it was the biggest single confiscation of gold Once made by Assam Police.
The man arrested at the scene was not a local criminal, insurgent or known border trader: Akshay Parasuram Bansode, 32, was a resident of Sangli district in Maharashtra.
For almost two months, Bansod had lived under a disguise in the Gandhibasti area of Guwahati, and posed as a physically disabled beggar on the streets of the city, while allegedly smuggling highly valued contraband through Guwahati.
This seizure was not just another big haul of gold. Police said the case may be linked to an international smuggling network whose links extend to Myanmar.
new trends in smuggling
Recent investigations by the Assam Police and successive reports from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) indicate that what was once primarily an air-smuggling network has increasingly shifted to land routes through Myanmar and the northeastern states of India.
The trend is clear: the Northeast is fast emerging as the preferred land corridor for organized gold-smuggling syndicates that move foreign-origin bullion to India.
Police said the gold recovery, the biggest ever recorded in Latasil, was not an isolated incident of border crime. Instead, he said, it represents a structurally sophisticated pipeline whose target markets are major Indian cities and whose preferred route has increasingly shifted to the northeast following tight monitoring at international airports.
After the Guwahati seizure, police said the syndicate may have brought the gold from West Asia via Myanmar before smuggling it into India via the Northeast. From Guwahati, the consignment was reportedly meant for distribution to major metropolitan markets including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, officials said on June 30.
Speaking on operational updates of the case, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (ADCP), Guwahati, Viku L. Achumi on Sunday acknowledged the possibility of a wider cross-border canvass of the racket.
Declining to share more operational details due to the ongoing investigation, Achumi said, “We are thoroughly investigating the backward linkages of this syndicate, which track to Myanmar, as well as the forward linkages that extend to several major Indian cities.”
West Asia to Northeast
For decades, India’s illegal gold trade followed a template. Mules or couriers fly directly into major Indian international airports from West Asian aviation hubs like Dubai, hiding the gold in checked luggage, electronic devices or even inside their bodies.
However, increasing DRI surveillance and customs zone structures at international airports gradually made air travel a more risky proposition.
Faced with stringent airport checks, the international syndicates planned a major logistics overhaul, preferring a circuitous land route through neighboring countries with porous borders rather than moving the gold directly to mainland India.
According to the DRI’s smuggling into India report, this alternative route effectively turned Myanmar into the primary transit corridor for the entry of illegal gold into India.
The agency says investigations have shown that most of the gold entering Myanmar passes through cities like Muej, Mandalay and Kalewa before reaching the China-Myanmar border. From there, it moves towards India through two major corridors: Tamu-Moreh in Manipur and Tedim-Zokhawthar in Mizoram.
Once inside India, the consignment is transported by road, rail and in some cases by air through the Northeast before being distributed to major markets across the country.
DRI has described the Northeast as one of the most important gold smuggling corridors of India due to its long international borders, rugged terrain and many informal crossing points.
weapons for gold
The agency also noted that many of the networks currently transporting gold have inherited routes that were used for arms smuggling during the peak years of insurgency in the region.
“As the insurgency subsided, the already established routes and carrier networks gradually shifted towards gold transportation,” one of the DRI reports said.
India shares a 1,643-km-long, densely forested and largely inaccessible border with Myanmar in Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. The absence of continuous fencing along large sections of this border provides smugglers with significant operational advantages.
Bansode case as indicator
The seizure in Guwahati in June appears to fit that broader pattern. According to Assam Police, Bansode was living in a rented house in Gandhibasti area of Guwahati for about two months and was reportedly working only as a transit carrier.
Guwahati East Deputy Commissioner of Police Sambhavi Mishra said on June 30 that he had disguised himself as a physically challenged beggar while carrying gold in the city to avoid suspicion.
Mishra said that during interrogation, Bansod admitted to having successfully transferred three previous consignments in the last two months and had also been paid approx. ₹80,000 for each delivery.
The case has also highlighted how carriers are increasingly coming from outside the Northeast while the region serves primarily as a transit zone rather than a final destination.
This trend has emerged repeatedly in recent investigations. On June 13, the DRI arrested 10 people after seizing around 17 kg of foreign-origin gold in coordinated operations in Kolkata and Agartala. ₹25 crores.
Of those arrested, seven were caught trying to smuggle 11.6 kg of gold from Thailand through the Kolkata airport, while the remaining three were stopped in Agartala in coordination with the Railway Protection Force (RPF) while allegedly transporting about five kg of foreign-origin gold through the Tripura sector of the India-Bangladesh border.
The India-Bangladesh border presents another challenge. Border security agencies have also detected special tunnels under the international border that have allegedly been used to transport gold bars of Swiss origin and other contraband towards markets in India, mainly in West Bengal.
Earlier, in March 2024, DRI had launched Operation Rising Sun, dismantling a major gold smuggling syndicate operating from Guwahati.
The operation began with the seizure of 22.74 kg of gold in Assam before expanding to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, eventually leading to the recovery of over 61 kg of smuggled gold and the arrest of 12 people.
Siliguri Corridor
The DRI has identified the Siliguri Corridor as one of the most important links in the supply chain, describing the narrow stretch connecting the northeast with mainland India as a major bottleneck through which smuggled gold moves towards other markets in the country.
Despite being about 20–22 kilometers wide at its narrowest point, the corridor remains the only land gateway connecting the Northeast to the rest of India, making it strategically important not only for trade but also for anti-smuggling operations.
According to Assam Police, the final destinations are rarely the border states. Instead, the consignments are typically transported to major trading centers such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, where they are either sold directly or melted down and integrated into the legal jewelery market, making it difficult to trace their origin.
Legal gold purchases through the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or authorized agencies require strict documentation, including PAN details, apart from attracting customs duty and other taxes. Smuggling gold completely bypasses these regulatory requirements, allowing syndicates to make substantial profits.
According to DRI field intelligence cited in trafficking in India reports, syndicates earn an estimated net profit of approx. ₹from 4 lakhs ₹Rs 5 lakh for every kilogram of smuggled gold successfully integrated into the domestic market. For a consignment like the 37 kg seized in Guwahati, the potential profit margin could be higher ₹1.5 crores.
Police said that after the June 29 seizure, they also recovered re-minted gold bars from Silchar, which shows that the town has also emerged as an important transit point as the highways connecting Manipur and Mizoram to Guwahati pass through here.
Officials say the consignments entering India through Moreh in Manipur or Zokhawthar in Mizoram often move by road towards Guwahati, with Silchar being one of the major road corridors connecting the two border states with Assam.
The DRI also documented increasingly sophisticated concealment methods adopted by organized syndicates.
methodology is changing
According to the DRI, instead of relying on a single carrier to transport large quantities of gold, networks now often use multiple couriers carrying smaller consignments, using specially modified vehicles equipped with hidden cavities, railway routes and informal financial channels such as hawala to reduce the risk of detection.
The changing profile of carriers has also made detection more challenging. In the Guwahati case, police said Bansod deliberately adopted the appearance of a physically disabled beggar while carrying gold through the city.
Earlier investigations across the country have found carriers ranging from tourists and families to foreign nationals and, in some airport cases, even insiders allegedly facilitating the movement of contraband.
Officials say the Northeast is no longer seen as just a border entry point, but as a carefully organized transit network, where consignments are temporarily stored, re-packed and then sent to markets across the country via road, rail and air routes.
Enforcement agencies acknowledge that each interception represents only one link in an often much larger international supply chain.
Significance of Guwahati seizure
The Guwahati seizure is significant not only because of the quantity of gold recovered, but also because it has once again drawn attention to the emerging geography of gold smuggling in India.
As Assam Police continues to probe backward links towards Myanmar and forward networks within India, the investigation is expected to yield new insights into how international syndicates are adopting stricter enforcement by shifting operations across the country’s porous land borders.
For enforcement agencies, the June 29 seizure reinforces what consistent DRI reports have indicated over the past few years: the Northeast has emerged as one of India’s most important transit corridors for organized gold smuggling.
