British Middle East Eye website said that Emirati diplomats face difficult questions after their country's consulate in Kerala, India, was involved in the issue of smuggling two million dollars of gold.
According to the site, the weight of the said gold is 30 kilograms, which were found in diplomatic bags sent from the United Arab Emirates to its consulate in Kerala, in southern India, from which thousands of workers from this Gulf country hail.
No direct charge has yet been brought against the Emirati diplomats themselves, but a suspected Indian employee - Swabna Suresh - claimed that her only connection to the said shipment was that he was asked to make inquiries about her at the request of the Emirati Consul General.
Suresh is still on the run so far, but in a bail request filed by her lawyers after he reached them through several intermediaries, Suresh tried to evade any relationship with the shipment and blame it entirely on the consulate, which she said she was still working with "on the request" despite She officially left work last year.
A former Indian employee of the consulate named Sarith Kumar was also arrested shortly after the gold was found.
Shortly after Kumar's arrest, the UAE embassy in India rushed to confirm that he was no longer working at the consulate, and a statement to the embassy on the subject said, "The employee in charge of misconduct was fired long before this incident."
But Suresh’s request for bail represented a source of much information, including revealing the relationship of this lady with the case through calls she made to customs before the shipment arrived, and she said that she was acting on the instructions of the acting Consul General, Rashid Khamis Al-Shumaili, who took this position after the departure of his predecessor, India In the wake of the Corona pandemic.
And the British Middle East Eye website, which reported the news, quoted a source working at the embassy of a Gulf country in New Delhi and is aware of how to deal with diplomatic luggage as saying that "it is not possible to send or receive (diplomatic portfolios) without the knowledge or approval of diplomats in the country." The original and the host. "
The Indian news site, Newsminute, on Tuesday quoted customs sources as saying that the shipment "was officially approved, signed and secured with a safety adhesive tape, and was sent by the United Arab Emirates government to its consulate in Kerala."
The Indian website commented on the incident, saying, "Opening diplomatic bags and finding smuggled goods - if not rare - is a serious problem, as the Indian National Investigation Agency says that organized smuggling may have serious implications for Indian national security."
On July 7, the Emirati embassy in India said in a public statement that it strongly rejects "such acts, and affirms categorically that the mission and its diplomatic personnel had no role in this matter."