DUBAI: A passenger who tried to be innovative while trying to smuggle gold through the international airport here was caught red-handed by the Air Intelligence Unit of the Customs here on Thursday.
Officials said Puthur Abdulla Ahmed Mansoor of Kasaragod reached the airport on an Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi. Officials from the Air Intelligence Unit, who got suspicious, intercepted him at the exit gate while he was going out of the baggage hall after customs clearance. A detailed examination, with his bags subjected to several rounds of X-ray scanning and physical checks, revealed two sheets of beaten yellow metal concealed in a false bottom of the two black duffel bags that he was carrying.
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Officials said 49 thin strips, pasted together into two sheets, were concealed under the plastic black resin cover used as false bottom for the bags.
Experts certified the sheets as 24 carat gold, weighing a total of 466.52 g, and the total market value was estimated at Rs.12.5 lakh.
A senior official said Mansoor’s profile was the primary factor that drew suspicion to him. He was a very frequent flyer, travelling from Dubai and Abu Dhabi to New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, some of these trips with just a gap of two days. But this was his first time via the Thiruvananthapuram airport and his behaviour too was suspicious.
A case has been booked against him, with the penalty likely to run above Rs.3 lakh.
Mansoor is believed to have told officials that he got the gold beaten into the strips and concealed in the false bottoms of the bags by goldsmiths in Dubai.
“This sort of concealment is very rare and in fact, the first time that we are detecting it at Thiruvananthapuram. X-ray scanning cannot detect these easily,” the official said.
The seizure was effected by the AI unit led by Assistant Commissioners S.L. Sreeparvathy and A. Pradeep Kumar, Superintendents Riaz Ahmed, Gangadevi, and K.G. Reghu, Air Intelligence Officers Nandita V., Arul Raj, and Arvind Kumar Kajla, and Havildar N.S. Thankaraj.
