CHENNAI: Recruiting airport `insiders’, hiding gold in aircraft toilets and seats – smugglers are coming up with craftier ways to hoodwink Customs sleuths.
In May 2014, Bhaskar Reddy and Rami Naidu, both GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL) security wing employees, were caught red-handed by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) sleuths while handing over 8 kg of smuggled gold to Gulbarga-based Mazhar Ali at the airport’s parking lot.
This was the first time that the law enforcement agency busted a massive gold smuggling racket involving airport staffers.
Six months later, Hyderabad police nabbed four smugglers from Chandrayangutta with 4.19 kg gold in their possession. When the case was later handed over to the DRI, investigations once again pointed to the involvement of an `insider’ working at the international facility in Shamshabad.
Several similar cases have surfaced thereafter.
Admitting that the use of staffers from within the airport is a trend that’s fast gaining ground, cops and customs officials say how this modus operandi has also become the most effective style of international gold smuggling now. “Involvement of an insider ensures 100% safe passage of gold through the airport,” Hyderabad police commissioner M Mahender Reddy said. And while this `operation’ works out to be tad expensive, smugglers don’t mind the rise in cost, claim sources.
“It is not like the traditional methods of smuggling – using a man or woman to carry gold concealed in their clothing or baggage – have been done away with. But more and more `dealers’ are now taking to roping in airport employees because of tighter scrutiny at the customs check area,” said a policeman.
And this works well for `insiders’ too, sources added, as the commission rates are fat and lucrative. Take the case of Dubai-based gold smuggling kingpin Rafiullah Baig, for instance. This man, who as per conservative estimates netted about Rs 50 lakh a week by sending bullion into the country through his moles at the airports, paid Rs 15,000 per kilo (of gold) as commission to each one of the two GHIAL workers. And this did not pinch Baig as the use of `official’ security men allowed him to smuggle in 5 to 10 times more gold into the city than what he could using `conventional’ methods of the trade.
Another technique `trending’ in the smugglers’ circuit these days is the use of seat cavities and toilet walls inside aircraft. In March 2015, the DRI seized 9 kg gold from a Spicejet flight that arrived at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) from Delhi. The gold was concealed in the cavity under the passenger’s seat cushion.
DRI Hyderabad unit head M K Singh said the aircraft had made an international trip between Dubai and Ahmedabad before being used on the domestic route. His inference: the gold could have been hidden in the seat cavity during the international journey for fellow members to `pick it up’ from the aircraft later while travelling between Delhi and Hyderabad.
To escape from the prying eyes of customs officials (there’s no such check on domestic routes).
“Smugglers identify a particular aircraft for this `job’ using its unique `call sign’ (aircraft number) and collect the gold whenever it is convenient for them,” said a customs official, while hinting at the use of `insiders’ in this `game plan’ as well. And while aircraft belonging to private airlines are also, at times, used in such smuggling activities, he claimed the preferred choice of smugglers was Air India flights.
“Only Air India has permission to ferry domestic passengers on their international flights. For example, AI 978 from Muscat to Bangalore via Hyderabad can take domestic passengers between Hyderabad and Bangalore.Private airlines do not have that permission. So what smugglers do is, place gold under the seat cushion or inside the toilet wall during the international leg of the journey and their associate who joins them midway as a domestic passenger collects it in the flight at an appropriate time and leaves the airport without being frisked (as he or she was a domestic passenger). Smugglers have also been increasingly using the house keeping staff and flight maintenance staff to pick up the gold left in aircraft,” the official added.
In May 2015, DRI seized 4 kg gold deftly concealed in the rear side toilets of Air India flight 978 when it arrived at the RGIA.
