THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Customs is again getting ready to grill former principal secretary M Sivasankar, who is in the dock for his relationship with gold smuggling case accused.

The Customs has started procedures to issue notice to Sivasankar, asking him to be present at its Kochi office for questioning.

Customs Preventive Commissioner Sumit Kumar will be directly interrogating Sivasankar. After questioning him, he may be arrested.

Earlier, Sivasankar was questioned by Customs at its Thiruvananthapuram office for hours. But his statements were found to be contradictory and they didn’t match with the digital evidence in the possession of the Customs.

This is the reason why Sivasankar will be questioned again.

The Customs has not taken at face value the statements of Sivashankar that he had not interfered in the recruitment of gold smuggling case Swapna Suresh in the IT department and that he didn’t know that she was a gold smuggler.

Sivasankar also could not give clear answer as to why he had booked a flat for Swapna.

The Customs still believe that Sivashankar knew about the gold smuggling deals of Swapna, Sandeep and Sairth.

In the initial interrogation, Sivasankar had said that he only had friendly relationship with first accused Sarith and second accused Swapna. But Customs has solid evidence to negate this statements.

The Customs say that by booking flat for accused, Sivasankar was making arrangements for them to scheme their operation and hide gold that was to be smuggled.

Meanwhile, the NIA has started interrogating Swapna and Sandeep together. Both have persistently said that they didn’t know that the gold was being smuggled for terror activities.