MUMBAI: On Wednesday morning 9 am, customs officials at the Mumbai airport intercepted Sunil Jagwani, a passenger who had just disembarked from Etihad flight EY212. Jagwani had 1,348 grams of foreign marked gold bars and cut biscuits concealed inside a cigarette packet.
What surprised the officials is when they saw Jagwani handing over the gold to Etihad’s security officer Deepak Golani, an executive who was in charge of security of all of the airline’s flights operating out of Mumbai.
Jagwani later admitted to giving similar consignments to Golani on four previous occasions.
As India grapples with the menace of illegal means of gold transportation into the country, smugglers are now roping in airline and airport executives as accomplices in their latest move to outsmart authorities.
Wednesday’s interception was the 18th instance in the last twelve months in Mumbai wherein airline or airport staff have been found to be hand in glove with groups bringing in illegal gold into this country, said Milind Lanjewar, additional commissioner of customs. Such cases were almost nil last year, he added. Like in the case of Golani, interrogations have revealed they had already managed to carry out the activity on several occasions before, undetected.
Golani’s case, which showed the involvement of a top official, is rare and disturbing, said Lanjewar to ET. Such cases usually see the involvement of airline cabin crew, groundhandlers and even workers at flight caterers, he added.
n March 15, a crew member of Jet AirwaysBSE 0.20 % flight 9W543 coming from Dubai, was intercepted with gold and diamonds worth over Rs 1.6 crore. A cabin crew member at Air India was detained at the Jeddah airport on charges on smuggling gold.
On April 9, two employees of Skygourmet Flight Kitchen were nabbed while trying to smuggle gold bars worth Rs 1.65 crore. On interrogation, they revealed they had done it, undetected on 30 previous occasions.
Mumbai airport sees the largest instances of smuggled gold in the country, mainly due to the large number of flights operated by gulf carriers. Airports in southern India, such as Kochi, also see high instances.
