AHMEDABAD: Indian Air Intelligence Unit of Customs department held a Punjab based man for smuggling 659 grams of gold worth Rs 17.89 lakh at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport.
Harpreet Singh was with six gold bars which were concealed in rectum. Interestingly, Singh was a domestic passenger as he had flown in from Delhi. Singh had arrived from Air India’s flight AI-019 from Delhi on Tuesday morning.
“He was a domestic passenger and he had picked up the gold bars from an international passenger. The exchange of gold bars happened inside the toilet at the international terminal,” said a Customs official.
Since the end of 2014, Air India has shifted all its operations to international terminal. “The international passenger had handed the gold bars to Singh believing that since Singh is a domestic passenger he will not be checked. We found his movement suspicious and upon search six gold bars were recovered,” added Customs official.
In last 10 days, AIU has recovered over 6 kg gold worth Rs 1.6 crore in two separate incidents. In both the incidents, the gold was hidden below SpiceJet’s SG-016 Dubai- Ahmedabad flight. In one case, two smugglers were held while in another case only gold was recovered. This is the 15th such incident in 2015 of gold smuggling and tenth in last one month. Since January 2014, around 74.33 kg of gold, worth Rs 19.46 crore has been seized at the airport by customs and DRI and 79 smugglers have been detained.
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