New Delhi, Feb 14 (IANS): The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Monday that it conducted search operations for two days last week in connection with a case pertaining to smuggling of human hair from India to Myanmar through illegal land routes via Mizoram, which generated huge amount of cash.

The ED was probing the fund trail of online Chinese betting mobile applications when it learnt that large hawala payments were made to local hair traders at borders connecting Myanmar.

The ED has seized various incriminating documents, hand-ritten diaries, digital devices besides recovering Rs 1.20 crore in cash during the search operations.

A senior ED official said that the searches were conducted at multiple locations in Hyderabad and Aizwal, and in nearby areas of Champai in Mizoram bordering Myanmar.

"The searches were conducted pertaining to smuggling of raw human hair from India to Myanmar through illegal land routes via Mizoram. A large part of cash thus generated was used for making illegal compensatory payments through unauthorised channels for smuggled hair and under-valued exports of human hair from entities spread across India," said a senior ED official.

The ED initiated the money laundering investigation after it came across large hawala payments to local hair traders in the fund trail investigation of online Chinese betting mobile applications.

The ED first reported the matter to Hyderabad Police which lodged an FIR under the relevant sections of IPC.

It was learnt that Nayla Family Exports Private Limited, with Md Ibrahim Patel as its Director, exported human hair by using benami import export code (IEC) of multiple local proprietary firms.

Also, large scale domestic sales of raw human hair was taking place from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to Guwahati and Kolkata.

"All this domestically sold hair was ultimately finding its way to China via Myanmar and the sale proceeds were surprisingly being received from shell bank accounts in Mizoram," the official said.

The ED then zeroed in on the following shell entities based out of Mizoram which were taking in hundreds of crores of cash deposits and then remitting the deposited amount to several hair merchants spread across India:

(1) Ms St Mary's Gem Industries, Champai (2) Ms Sun Moon Human Hair, Champai (3) Ms Thari Enterprises Aizwaland.

A person named Lucas Thangmangliana, a resident of Champai district, was the chief facilitator of the hawala operations.

The ED has identified various suspicious bank accounts which were being used for huge cash deposits. Accordingly, it issued freezing order under PMLA against 139 such bank accounts.

The statements of bankers and account holders are being recorded.