In what may rekindle a more than four-year-old debate about India’s probable link with the controversial Blood diamonds, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) here claims to have inputs about some of these gemstones being smuggled into Surat, the diamond cutting and polishing hub.
Blood or Conflict diamonds originate primarily from war zones like Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are illegally mined and later sold secretly. The perpetrators use the profits to buy arms, fund civil wars and military coups against legitimate governments there.
In order to ban the trade of Conflict diamonds, the United Nations (UN) in January 2003, took an initiative called the Kimberly Certification process.
The process is essentially a certificate from the exporter, certifying that all diamonds imported into a country, do not come from any of these zone, that the UN calls “conflict areas.”
A total of 54 countries, including India, endorsed the initiative. Being the largest processor and exporter of precious stones in the world, India, with a turnover of Rs 45,000 crore, has always been suspected of getting some of these diamonds processed here, DRI officials say. And with nine out of every 11 diamonds in the world being cut in Surat, the city’s cutting and polishing industry is always under the scanner.
The DRI says that it has inputs about some diamond traders in Surat bringing in crude Blood diamonds here discreetly and then selling them to reputed firms after processing and polishing them.
These firms, according to the DRI, later export these gemstones with a Kimberly Certification, claiming that the diamonds were not imported from the conflicted areas. “These traders and firms are under our scanner and our investigations are on,” DRI additional director general, M Michael said. He, however, refused to disclose the names of these perpetrators. Surat’s gems and jewellery industry, which comprises of more than 6,000 small and big diamond cutting and polishing units, employs around seven lakh people.
The DRI claims that these diamonds are brought here in fishing boats through the shallow waters of Gujarat’s west coast. “Once the diamonds are brought here, their origin is difficult to trace and once they are polished, they can not be recognised,” a DRI officer said.
“There are intelligence reports of Blood diamonds entering the Indian market from trading centres in Antwerp, London and Israel,” the officer added.