Odisha highway surveillance has come under scrutiny after the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) seized foreign-origin gold worth nearly Rs 9 crore in Visakhapatnam and arrested two men who allegedly transported the consignment through the state on National Highway 16.
The DRI said it intercepted 5,832 grams of 24-carat gold biscuits, valued at around Rs 8.98 crore, in a car travelling from Kolkata to Hyderabad via Odisha. The agency suspects that the gold was smuggled into India through the India-Bangladesh border before being moved towards Hyderabad. The interception took place in Visakhapatnam on Friday.
The route between Kolkata and Visakhapatnam spans about 880 km. According to the report, the accused travelled nearly half of that distance through Odisha before the seizure, prompting questions about surveillance, highway patrolling and checking at transit points within the state.
The development came shortly after Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi directed the state police and Special Task Force on September 10 to increase vigilance and ensure that Odisha does not become a transit corridor for interstate smuggling and trafficking. The direction followed the discovery of five baby orangutans in Balasore district, a case suspected by authorities to be linked to an international exotic wildlife trafficking network.
The two cases involve different forms of alleged trafficking, but have brought attention to the use of Odisha’s road network as a passage between eastern and southern parts of the country. NH-16 is a major north-south highway connecting cities and industrial regions along the eastern coast, making continuous physical screening of every vehicle difficult.
S K Pani, a retired deputy superintendent of police, questioned the effectiveness of highway patrolling and naka checking after the gold consignment travelled through a long stretch of the state without being detected. He said the movement pointed to gaps in surveillance and intelligence gathering, and called for stronger intelligence networks, closer coordination among enforcement agencies and focused monitoring of vulnerable transit corridors.
Odisha Police rejected allegations of general laxity, saying enforcement operations are largely intelligence-based. Police officers said state and central agencies develop their own sources and act on specific inputs rather than physically screening every vehicle on a busy national highway.
An Odisha police officer said no police force could check every vehicle on a heavily used national highway, adding that successful interceptions were usually based on actionable intelligence. The officer also said incidents such as the seizure could help identify vulnerabilities and that the police would continue to strengthen monitoring and coordination with other agencies.
The seizure now places attention on how agencies share intelligence across state borders and between enforcement bodies working on smuggling, trafficking and highway security. The state government’s next steps include the increased vigilance and inter-agency coordination directed by the chief minister, while the DRI’s action remains the immediate enforcement development in the case.
