MUMBAI: The Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) of customs has nabbed a person with gold worth Rs 1.61 crore at the city airport. According to sources, he has been arrested and booked under the Indian Customs Act, and the gold seized. With this, the AIU has seized a total of 395 kilogrammes of gold till date from Mumbai airport.
Sources said the AIU intercepted an Indian passenger, Raj Vasant Jadhav, at about 8.30 am on Monday after he landed at the city airport on a Jet Airways 9W123 flight from Paris. AIU officials found his behaviour suspicious while crossing the green channel. He was stopped and personally searched when officials recovered seven gold bars of one kg each, amounting to Rs 16,193,800. Four out of the seven bars had been concealed by Jadhav inside the soles of his shoes, while three were recovered from the pockets of his underpants.
This is the first incident since 2010 where a person arriving from Paris has been involved in gold smuggling. Since the past five years, when the city has been seeing a hike in gold smuggling cases with 1008 kilogram gold seized last year, this is the first time when the gold arrived from Paris. Additional commissioner of AIU Milind Lanjewar said, “While questioning, Jadhav mentioned that he is just a gold carrier, who has been smuggling goods for monetary consideration.”
This year, Mumbai airport has seen gold smuggling through various modus operandi where kingpins have used gold carriers such as the elderly, women and women with infants. With the latest arrest, however, AIU officials have expressed concern that smugglers have managed to zero in on newer routes. A senior official from AIU said, “We often see smuggling attempts from passengers coming from Dubai, Thailand and Riyadh and we deploy our officials too in flights coming from these countries. But it seems, smugglers are now looking for other routes too.”
