DUBAI: A hoodwink tactic by a 26-year-old woman passenger was not smart enough to give a slip to the customs officials on Sunday morning. The woman was nabbed by the officials at the Jaipur airport with 2,561 gram (nearly 2.5 kg) of gold concealed in the transformer stamping of a microwave. The woman hails from Mumbai and it was allegedly her first journey to Jaipur as a “carrier” of smuggled gold.
According to the senior officers of customs, they already had information on the woman passenger coming from Abu Dhabi to Jaipur on Sunday morning.
“We were not sure in which of her articles the woman, identified as Heena Javed Rindani, had concealed the gold. After a thorough scanning of her baggage it was found that the gold was hidden in the stamping of the transformer of the microwave,” said a senior officer of customs.
After taking the microwave, it was shown to our assessor who found 2,561 gram of gold concealed in the microwave. “The gold was worth nearly Rs 62 lakh,” said an officer.
“In the interrogation it was found that this was the first journey of the woman to Jaipur and she had never used this route before. She was a carrier, who had brought in gold on the behest of some people of her acquaintance,” said an official.
In the past, the customs officials had cracked the hoodwink tricks of the smugglers at the Jaipur airport. The gold was concealed from the nib of a pen to shoes, zip of the trouser to coil of iron.
“Such is the scenario these days that we have to check everything from a box of cookies to refills of pens, zips of pants to even shoes, which are been used to conceal gold,” said an officer.
Asked how these people are able to conceal gold in these items, a senior officer of customs, said, “We have learnt from the interrogation of arrested smugglers that Dubai has various shops where you can purchase gold in various shapes. They have shops which give you trousers having golden zips, as heavy as you want to purchase. There are shops which sell cell phones whose batteries are made up of gold.”
