TAMIL NADU: A 51-year-old man from Kerala was held with nearly one-and-a-half kilogram of gold plates at Coimbatore airport.
Sleuths attached to the directorate of revenue intelligence (DRI) said P R Divakaran, of Changanacherry near Kottayam in Kerala, tried to smuggle the gold plates worth around Rs4.1 million in the open market concealed in a woofer box.
This was second gold smuggling case involving a Keralite reported at Coimbatore airport in three days. On Saturday morning, the DRI sleuths had arrested Cholamukath Kareem Sajid, of Malappuram in Kerala and seized from him 1.16 kilogram of gold worth around Rs3.5 million hidden in his rectum.
On Monday morning, the DRI sleuths arrested Divakaran and seized 1kg and 406gm of gold plates from him. According to them, Divakaran, who runs a bakery in Changanacherry, was a first-time offender.
The arrested, the DRI sleuths said, had gone to Sharjah 10 days ago from Kerala. He landed in Coimbatore airport in Air Arabia flight on Monday around 4.05am. Feeling suspicious about his movements, a team of DRI officials at the airport thoroughly checked him and found gold plates concealed inside the woofer box.
Immediately, they took him to the DRI office on Trichy Road and grilled him. Divakaran told the police that it was his first ever visit to Sharjah where he met a few people who promised thousands for smuggling the gold plates.
“He confessed that he was just a carrier and he was asked to hand over the gold plates to someone in Kerala,” the DRI sleuths said and added that further investigations were on.
Cholamukath Kareem Sajid was also caught smuggling gold from Sharjah and he also had confessed that he was just a carrier.
